1) Can you share some details about the policy context addressed by your Action Plan and on how its implementation will contribute to improving the policy instruments tackled within your region?
The desire to extend the fields of use for assisted living technology has successfully driven The Welfare Technology Development Fund since 2013. The Aarhus City Council has decided to put emphasis on innovation and public private partnerships, and this shift in the Fund’s objective calls for an adjustment of its guidelines, application- and impact measurement criteria so these reflect the emphasized focus on innovation and public-private partnerships. When innovation is the focal point in a project, old methods of measuring effects are no longer sufficient. It is difficult to predict the outcome of an innovation process and even more difficult to predict an efficiency improvement. Therefore, we need new methods for measuring value and impact.
2) Which are the actions you are going to implement and how much have they got inspired by the EU_SHAFE project’s activities devoted to the interregional exchange of experiences?
The action plan was inspired by the workshop at the 3rd Interregional Policy Learning Meeting in Aarhus in September 2021. Divided into working groups, the partners discussed the challenges they faced improving their policy instruments, what impact they were aiming at achieving and how to measure this impact. All project’s partners agreed that discussion and exchange of experiences within the working groups was very valuable for the preparation of the action plans.
The activities include amending business case guidelines and developing method for measuring impact and evaluation design. The next step is testing the method and evaluation design on 1 or 2 projects. Also, the communication of the new scope and terms of the PPI Fund to relevant public and private parties is a very important activity.
3) On which main financial sources you will leverage for the execution of the actions envisaged and which is the related time frame for their completion?
All potential costs will be covered by the administrative budget of the PPI Fund. All activities are expected to be completed by the end of July 23.
