12th october 2005 the understand project 1 benchmarking regional information society: the project...

12th October 2005 The UNDERSTAND project 1

Benchmarking regional information society: the project Understand

Open Days

Brussels, 12th October 2005Sandra Lotti - Regione Emilia-Romagna


Why a regional benchmarking?

• “Studies of competitiveness and economic development have tended to focus on the nation as the unit of analysis, and on national attributes and policies as the drivers. As regional scientists and economic geographers have long understood, however, there are substantial differences in economic performance across regions in virtually every nation. This suggests that many of the essential determinants of economic performance are to be found at the regional level.”

M. Porter, 2003


The rationale: if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it

• Regions have a key role to ensure economic competitiveness and social/geographical cohesion, in particular for innovative fields such as broadband, e-government, ICT usage. There’s a huge investment on Information Society by regions, which need to evaluate the impact of their investment. Benchmarking enables comparison and mutual learning between governments, and it’s especially needed in innovative fields such as Information Society. BUT…• There’s no comparable data on Information Society for EU regions (even

for the future)• Many regions have observatories but collected data are not comparable • Many private sources provide data, often very different and disputed

Regions need to manage this process, not to follow it passively

• Emilia-Romagna felt this need as soon as the regional ICT Plan (2002-2005) was approved: it was a 150m€ investment with yearly updates to have the possibility to readdress priorities and initiatives: we needed a tool to inform us on the relation between policies and results, and on possible alternatives.


Why a regional benchmarking?

• We started comparing Emilia-Romagna with the benchmarking data from e-Europe, that is to say with nations

• Regions get together with a bottom-up initiative to agree common indicators, collect data and involve many more regions in validating and using them. Following proposal from Emilia-Romagna Region through the European Regional Information Society Association (eris@) 10 regions from 7 EU countries get together in UNDERSTAND.

% internet users (UE 2002, E-R 2003)

73% 70% 68% 67%62% 61% 61%

57% 56%51% 49% 49% 48%

42% 42% 40%

18%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

DANMARK

SWEDEN

NEDERLAND

FINLA

ND

LUXEM

BOURG

UNITEDKIN

GDOM

IRELA

ND

DEUTSCHLAND

UE15

BELGIQUE

FRANCEE-R

PORTUGAL

ESPANA

ITALIA

ELLAS


Understand partnership: 10 regions from 7 EU countries

Vasternorrland

The partnership provides us with a good coverage of Europe, and also with enough diversity to make comparison an useful tool.


Definition of indicators

Surveys

Results evaluation

and

6/ 2004 12/ 2004 6/ 2005 12/ 2005 6/ 20062/ 2004

Revision of indicators

Surveys

Results evaluation

First cycle

Second cycleSecond cycle

OTHER NON PARTNER REGIONS

UseProvide input

UseProvide fdback

Provide fdback

The project life


Methodological approach of Understand

• Pragmatic approach: not to define yet another methodology and ICT indicators, but use the most consolidated ones.

Citizens:eEurope; SIBIS; BISER; OECD model questionnaire; Sourir/Sensitic 2; The Work Foundation – iSociety; other regional research.

E-business:eEurope; eBusiness-watch; SIBIS; BISER; OECD model questionnaire; Regional-IST; other regional research.

E-government:Nordic Model Questionnaire; eEurope-CGEY; NESIS; Regional-IST; KEeLan; Topoftheweb; IEG surveys (UK); IRIA (E); other regional research.

Broadband infrastructure:Osservatorio Banda Larga (I); ORTEL (F); ESPON project 1.2.2.


Methodological approach (2):definition of domains and indicators

1. Responding regions selected e-government, e-business and citizens as top domain, and proposed broadband infrastructure as additional domain

2. After reviewing all the ±400 indicators of existing projects, partners chose the most relevant indicators and used the existing methodology for it. An handbook has been produced with indicators and methodology for each domain, to make sure that results of surveys are fully comparable. After the first round of surveys indicators have been modified and a new version of the handbook has been produced: suggestions from new regions joining the project have been taken into account.


Methodological approach

project part-financed by the European Union

UNDERSTAND

European regions UNDER way towardsSTANDard indicators for benchmarkingthe information society

Methodology Handbook

Version 2: for 2005 data collection

Author(s): ISEU, University of Wales SwanseaContributor(s): Emilia Romagna, Piedmount,Aquitaine, Hessen, Isles Baleares,Communidad Valenciana, Mellersta Norrland,Yorkshire and the Humber, Wales, Wielpolskie.Issue Date: J uly 2005Version: FinalStatus (public – restricted): Restricted

The Handbook is available to all regions that engage themselves in using Understand methodology and make resulting data available on the project DB: we have therefore prepared a memorandum of collaboration to be signed


Methodological approach (3):pursue complete transferability to all regions

• Indicators for all EU regions, not only for partners: use more STANDard indicators, little creativity, high interaction with other regions and experts all along the project.

• Not defining a common ex-ante theoretical framework, but let each region use its own for regional analysis.

• Start from the need of the users, i.e. regional policy makers.• Involve more regions. Benchmarking benefits from network

economies: the more regions use the indicators, the more value benchmarking delivers.


WHAT WE DELIVER: Output

1. Methodology handbook:– Broadband: focus on coverage; technology competition; providers

competition– E-government: not only online services: back-office, skills, usage, multi-

channel delivery, e-democracy.– E-business: not overall economy, but three specific sectors.

Regions very significantly in terms of economic sectors (more than countries), overall data are not meaningful. We therefore selected: tourism, ICT and mechanical

1. Citizens: access, usage, skills. Focus on usage of public and private services (local-global).

2. Regional data collection from 9 EU regions (2 domains for regions);

3. Regional benchmarking database where to upload regional data

Non-partner regions can benefit from a ready-made methodology and the on-line database to upload data and compare against other EU regions.


The threats and opportunities of benchmarking

• Measuring is necessary, not to make rankings of winners and losers, but to assess ICT adoption over time. Recent research (EIU 2004) states that ICT uptake needs to reach a threshold before it can impact on productivity and that there is a time-lag between investment and impact. This makes measurement across time and across regions even more urgent.

• Benchmarking provides comparable statistical data. It is not evaluation, but provides a basis for evaluation. The same indicator has different meaning in different regions (result, impact, context).

– Data are a basic fact on which to found analysis of the policies, strength and weaknesses and possibly readdress them.

• Two-tier benchmarking: 1) comparable basic data between regions to assess readiness and usage and 2) in depth research within a region to assess usage and impact.

• UNDERSTAND directly produces the first tier. Each region, individually, can produce the second tier for its own needs.


First tier: Broadband infrastructure, difficult to collect, but necessary data

Emilia-Romagna

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%DSL

FTTH

cable TVWiFi/ WLL

UMTS

Wielkopolska

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%DSL

FTTH

cable TVWiFi/ WLL

UMTS

Valencia

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%DSL

FTTH

cable TVWiFi/ WLL

UMTS

Yorkshire & the Humber

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%DSL

FTTH

cable TVWiFi/ WLL

UMTS


First tier: E-government,strategies and results

Municipalities with an ICT strategy

100%

92%

5%

17%

21%

6%

21%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Wales

Yorkshire and the Humber

Wielkopolska

Hessen

Comunidad Valenciana

Piemonte

Emilia-Romagna

Municipalities with broad band connection

11%

23%

36%

6%

34% 64%

20%

59%

75%

52%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Wielkopolska

Hessen


Piemonte

Emilia-Romagna

Comuni con banda larga superiore ai 2Mbps Comuni con banda larga

Electronic documents handling

92%

14%

21%

27%

9%

26%

75%

11%

13%

16%

0%

12%

88%88%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Wales


Wielkopolska

Hessen


Piemonte

Emilia-Romagna

Electronic doc.handling system

Muncipalites allowing on line payment via web

50%

83%

1%

6%

3%

17%

0%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Wales


Wielkopolska

Hessen


Piemonte

Emilia-Romagna

Electorinic case admin.


First tier: Measuring e-business with a sectorial approach

Imprese che utilizzano Internet per comunicare con la P.A. Enterprises that use the Internet to communicate with P.A.

50%

38% 37%30%

65%

43%47%

53%

34%

67%

78%

54%

86%

72%

93%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Meccanica - Machinery ICT Turismo - Tourism

Emilia-Romagna Vasternorrland Hessen Piemonte Islas Baleares

Imprese che ricevono ordini on line Enterprises that receive orders on line

33%

21%

57%

20%13%

68%

30%

38%

87%

15%

36%

94%

66%73%

76%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%


Emilia-Romagna Piemonte Vasternorrland Hessen Islas Baleares

Imprese che usano un sistema di Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Use of ERP systems

52%

24%

2%

37%45%

19%

78%

65%

57%62% 64%

8%2% 1%

20%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%



Imprese che comprano on line Enterprises that buy on line

37%

57%

37%

45%

68%

40%

67%

96%

48%

85%91%

59%

73%

49%

99%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%




First tier: Citizens usage of ICT

Homes with broad band on total connected homes

14%8% 10%

18% 22%

40%35%

41%

57%

45%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Emilia-Romagna Wales Yorkshire andthe Humber

Islas BalearesVasternorrland

Case a banda larga maggiore di 2Mbps Case a banda larga

Internet users that visited PA web sites to find i nfoOr download forms

39%

20%

39% 38% 36%

0%5%

10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%50%55%60%



Internet users that orderd products on line

25%

54%62%

10%

49%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%



3%

9%11%

1%

24%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%



e-government transactional users


Second tier: our regional analysis

• When comparing the effort spent by our PA in providing the possibility to have complete transaction on line Munic. with online payment facilities

50%

83%

1%

6%

3%

17%

0%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Wales


Wielkopolska

Hessen


Piemonte

Emilia-Romagna

with the use from citizens we realised that still “e-brochure” is more popularthen e-government: infact

E-government information users

39%

20%

39% 38% 36%

0%5%

10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%50%55%60%



E-government transactional users

3%

9%11%

1%

24%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%



Which has led us to revise our ICT plan and give more space to communication and the development of different, more user friendly channels (ie:TDT)


Next steps

• Increase the number of regions using Understand– Strong co-operation launched with statistical offices (Hessen, Italy, Denmark

and Norway, Spanish regions) to reach comparability and manage overlapping.

– In Italy a special relationship has been set up with ISTAT that has just launched the first survey on ICT usage by local public administration: the ISTS questionnaire includes the majority of the Understand one

– Italian network of Regional Competence Centres is actively supporting the project, by the creation of a “Understand Centre” to transfer know-how to non-partner Italian regions: Puglia and Toscana have already joined in.

• Add new topics that have been dismissed in this phase for budgetary reasons: schools, health

• Offer this methodology for the measuring of projects in ICT funded by the Structural Funds : (blue prints, creating a map to measure eu information society progress, starting from the Understand experience, and based on SF funding in ICT projects…but not only ICT)


Next steps

• i2010: has in the e-Europe era benchmarking is an important part of the programme but again it stops at national level. We think we can demonstrate that the regional dimension is fundamental to better comprehend and govern all processes dealing with innovation and would like our approach to be considered and empowered by the Commission itself.

• All items of the Lisbon agenda could be similarly measured, and have regions as the core of analysis : the approach we applied to Information Society could be applied to the area of innovation as we are doing now with the MERIPA project (FPVI/Innov 4).


Thank you for your attention!

WWW. understand-eu.net

[email protected]@regione.emilia-romagna.it

12th october 2005 the understand project 1 benchmarking regional information society: the project...

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