DIGITAL REGIONS, 'Regional policies adopting Industry 4.0 for their Digital Transformation', project partners are currently implementing their Regional Action Plans (RAP) to best adapt innovation policies to support the manufacturing sector as a result of the emergence of Industry 4.0. Today we speak with Cristin Cistelecan, Head of Investment Promotion and Development Office at West Regional Development Agency (WRDA).
What is the main action of your Regional Action Plan?
DIGITAL REGIONS project was the instrument to ignite the digitalization of the regional ecosystem by increasing industry 4.0 awareness and preparing the implementation of the future facilitator organization EDIH (European Digital Innovation Hub) in the new funding environment generated by the West Regional Program 2021-2027.
The mechanism from behind the West Region Romania Action Plan is meant to consolidate and facilitate the capacity of the regional technology suppliers (partners of European Digital Innovation Hub - EDIH), to respond to the market created by the funding opportunities generated by the West Regional Program 2021-2027. Therefore, the action proposed is addressed to the pre-operational phase of DIGIVEST (West Region Romania EDIH).
Having three activities, the Action Plan was targeting the mapping of digital and technological infrastructure of the regional stakeholders, a meeting with these organizations and reach a consensus for the service delivery, and the inception proven by the first presence of DIGIVEST in the market, by delivering a draft of the communication strategy concept at the end of Phase 2 of the project.
What will your organisation achieve with its implementation?
We expect that after the implementation of the action plan, West RDA will have two concrete deliverables that will foster the activity of DIGIVEST (West Region Romania EDIH) in two essential areas:
- Governance and service delivery model based on the commitment and engagement of the ICT cluster members that are directly interested to test their technologies in an open environment together with group of companies.
- Communication concept of the DIGIVEST which will increase the visibility of the services, including the visibility of the ICT Cluster as a dynamic organisation and will contribute to recruiting new companies to benefit of the services created.
What are going to be the next steps during the following months of the project until the end of Phase 2?
The stakeholders meeting with the ICT Cluster members helped to gain commitment to engage in the following five thematic areas, consequently the next period, five small meetings will follow in order to organise the content of the services and partnership among members. Based on these meetings, the outcome will be used to support the communication concept. Our communication expert will organize the communication concept based on: target groups, messages, channels, instruments.
Would you like to highlight some unforeseen results?
The DIGIVEST project managed to steer the interest of the ICT companies to give something back to the business community of small companies. They are not the usual clients of the ICT companies, since they are not having the financial resources to generate valuable contracts.
During the first months of implementation, the NOKIA company will provide the physical place for the EDIH consultants to work in. It is a local coworking place – fab lab initiative called NOKIA Garage and it is a tool to interact with local young talents. In this new context, the NOKIA Garage will incubate the DIGIVEST activity and will contribute to the overall branding an promotion mechanism.
