International projects

In the area of e-service and e-government we've participated in different transnational projects. The foremost reason for us to focus on this area is the fact that the changes in society will have a great impact on our local authorities and on trade and industry in the region. Today it is self-evident for an increasing number of people that services and goods should be available around the clock independent of office hours and geographical obstacles. And these citizens also expect municipalities to keep up with development in the rest of the society regarding accessibility, interaction and collaboration.

There is also an increased interest and discussion surrounding e-services due to the expected shortage of workforce in the future and demands for increased efficiency in the authorities. The infrastructure for e-service operation is already in place, including the broadband investments already made, and now we need  to increase the use of these IT investments.

For more information you are welcome to contact the projectleader Charlie Wallin at charlie.wallin@y.komforb.se.

Current international projects

DARRA - Digital Age for Rural and Remote Areas

The objective of the DARRA project is to decrease the digital divide in remote and rural areas among the partner regions, through boosting the usage of ICT by SMEs and the public sector, and improve the overall regional competitiveness. The digital divide is a handicap inter- and intraregionally and an indicator of a regions peripherality. The overall objective of the project is to catch up with the digital divide between sparsely populated rural areas and urban areas. Sparsely populated and rural areas are still suffering from lack of ICT uptake and very often from less effective ICT-solutions both in the private and the public sectors. However, it is exactly such regions that need to utilise ICT extensively as a way of counteracting the problems of long distances both within these regions and as much as from more central areas. In most parts of the rural regions broadband networks and devices are no longer an obstacle for using the available services but implementation of these services is the problem, for businesses as well as for the public sector. After the project rural regions will benefit from more competitive business, more effective public services and full development of ICT.

DARRA project will create a vision of year 2020 regarding life styles in peripheral areas and sparsely populated regions. This vision will be a guide when creating ICT-strategies in these regions. The e-ladder model which was developed in the BIRRA-project will be valuated to this end by the partner regions, which will take one step forward in selected domains of the e-ladder. This means very concrete steps in regional ICT development. The actions in the project will lead to raised awareness and ICT uptake among SMEs and the public sector. Participating regions are Lapland and Kainuu in Finland, Sogn og Fjordane in Norway, Donegal in Northern Ireland (UK) and Mid West region in Ireland.

The project is divided in 4 work packages:
WP 1  Project management, evaluation and communication
WP 2  ICT vision for remote and sparsely populated areas
WP 3  Developing ICT-maturity of SMEs
WP 4  E-government solutions supporting e-business

Workpackage 3 and 4 focuses mainly on the development of e-commerce in the region and the use of electronic invoice. We have developed a calculation tool for the web that enables small businesses to easily make a cost analysis to see if there is money to be made by going over to electronic invoices. The simple calculation tool can be downloaded here.

PIKE - Promoting Innovation and the Knowledge Economy

The PIKE project focuses in stimulating the successful uptake of the Information Society (IS) at regional level, particularly broadband and Internet services.  It is funded by the INTERREG IVC programme and has recieved the Fast Track status from the European Commission. This means that the project is one of six chosen capitalisation projects who has defined good examples and are going to learn from each other in order for regions to modernise and find new ways to provide government services to its citizens through e-government. The project is an initiative from the ERNACT network of regions and is also supported by South East Bulgaria, Central Greece, the city of Bologna in Italy and the County of Västernorrland in Sweden. 

The aim of the project is to improve regional and local Innovation & Knowledge Economy policies through the exchange, sharing and transfer of e-government and Wireless Broadband good practices coming from different regions. This will be accomplished by the integration of these good practices into the Convergence and Regional Competitiveness and Employment policies of the participating regions. 

The PIKE project had its launch conference in Derry, Northern Ireland on the 25th of November. 

Read more about the PIKE-project here.

CMC@NP - Connected Mobile Communities in the Northern Periphery  

The CMC-project started in September this year and its objectives is to:

•  Develop the capability of rural area communities within the NP to incorporate emerging broadband mobile services into their community development strategies. 
• Use the capability to develop a number of broadband mobile services that support sustainable development of specific sectors in NP communities. 
•  Utilise the services to (1) improve the inherent sustainability of communities and to (2) provide economic connections to more central areas. 

The project is funded through the Northern Periphery programme and its partners are regions from Finland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Spain.

Current projects