The UK Government has decided that the ERDF in England will be delivered by the network of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP). In accordance with this, the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP (GBSLEP) have adopted the “European Investment Fund Strategy” which combines a range of funds (including ERDF) into an integrated programme. For BETTER this includes Investment Priority 1 of ERDF Priority Axis 1(b): Thematic Objective T01 Strengthening Research, Technological Development & Innovation. This is focused on developing the innovation ecosystem to promote greater investment in product and service development, technology transfer, social innovation, demand stimulation, networking and new public service applications. Particularly it aims to aid innovation of key enabling technologies like AI and Big Data(Eight Great Technologies as set out in ‘Smart Specialisation in England”) that are transforming business models and have the potential to improve people’s lives and support global productivity and growth. To achieve public sector reform and societal impact at scale requires greater cooperation and collaboration as part of a regional innovation ecosystem to stimulate new partnerships across the private and public sector and new interventions and strategies to support development of new products and services that will solve societal challenges, enhance the digital capabilities of public authorities and business and drive jobs and growth.

Main Features:

The Thematic objective 1 of the Operational Programme ERDF 2014-2023 of North Middle Sweden aims to “strengthen research, technical development and innovation”.

Furthermore TO2 “Enhancing access to, and use and quality of, information and communication technologies” has the objective of extending broadband coverage and developing ICT products and services.

Why it should be improved:

The analysis shows that there are needs for deeper cluster collaboration in existing clusters and in new areas to contribute to a raised level of innovation.

A low R&D intensity has been identified as a weakness.

Furthermore Broadband investments in the region’s sparsely populated and rural areas have been identified as priority intervention needs (A good broadband infrastructure is very important in order to develop both public and commercial services).

North Middle Sweden is characterised by long distances and large parts of the region are sparsely populated. This means that there are no incentives for commercial roll-out of broadband in parts of the region. The proportion of population and places of work that have high-speed broadband access is lower in North Middle Sweden than the country as a whole, which reduces access to and development of ICT-based services.

Various forms of e-services, such e-commerce, e-learning and e-health, can also improve life quality and reduce the need for travel and transport.

MAIN FEATURES.

The Development Plan of Tartu 2018-2025 includes the priority 3 “City of inspiring urban environment” that will be the focus the policy instrument. It contains several objectives and the current project would mainly focus on the objective of designing an inspiring urban environment.

This action includes the implementation of new digital solutions that would enable better service for citizens and higher satisfaction of public servants.

REASONS TO BE IMPROVED

The digital agenda has been important for several years which means that Tartu has already achieved quite a good level. However, this indicates that it is not a trivial task to design a plan for the future and find smart ways how the city government could use the help of citizens, local companies and research institutions to develop or even redesign public services offered by the (local) government. Therefore it is vital to:

- Defining a more systematic roadmap and mechanisms for the city government to enable and boost a desired change in the future.

- target concrete smart specialisation sectors selected on a national level, e.g. ICT, AI tools and digital platforms.

- learn from others and improve the strategic approach. The main goal is to increase the region's economic growth and provide jobs by supporting a shift towards high technology sectors.

MAIN FEATURES

The city’s Urban Development Concept defines Nyíregyháza’s long-term vision for its social and economic environment, while the IUDS outlines the objectives to be achieved in the medium-term (4 to 10 years), the interventions and the implementation process.

As a county capital, Nyíregyháza is the center of several public services, therefore, an emphasis was put on the development of citizen-friendly and efficient e-administration services, in the framework of the 4th Thematic Objective of the strategy (High quality human services).

WHY IT SHOULD BE IMPROVED

There are no statistics at local level about e-governance but the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) shows that a significant number of citizens still only use basic online services, rather than advanced ICT solutions: Hungary has the second largest proportion of internet users on social networks in Europe (84%), but the fifth lowest on e-governance platforms (49%) – these numbers are unlikely to be higher in Nyíregyháza. Cognitive and motivational reasons are dominant: lack of trust in electronic procedures and the government in general, disinterest in new technologies, etc. Hungary – and the county, as the most disadvantaged region – also lags behind in the level of innovations, e.g. the development of new generation networks, more complex IT applications supporting business processes and cloud services.