Smart Regions

This website is a showcase of over forty remarkable achievements in the domain of e-Services, e-Learning and e-Government that were realised in European regions in 2002-2007. In that period regions and cities in Belgium, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom closely worked together. They call them Smart Regions. Most people associate e-Government exclusively with digital forms or complex back-office applications but this is only a small part. E-Government is as much about changing mindsets, building a vision on service-delivery and showing leadership in getting organisations to work together, as it is about technology. All the governments, research institutions or voluntary organisations depicted on this website have one shared goal: to make their region better, stronger and smarter. And the secret to regional development is actually very simple: co-operation. The Smart Regions share infrastructure, exchange methodologies, copy succesfull achievements, have built strong stakeholder structures and managed to involve other sectors of society. Smart regions not only work together, Smart Regions are smart because they work together. It is estimated that local authorities handle about 80% of the transactions between government and citizens. Local e-Government therefore has a vital role to play in transforming the quality of local services and the organisations that deliver them, but Local Government cannot succeed alone. They have to work together with other government levels, with research institutes, with voluntary organisations, with the business community etc. Traditional government delivers services to people. E-Government can work with people to deliver change. The purpose of this website is to give the user a first insight into the \u27what\u27 and \u27why\u27 rather than the \u27how\u27. More detailed information about all the projects can be found under \u27Documents\u27. Smart Regions is a joint project between three Interreg IIIB North Sea projects namely LoG-IN, BIRD and ICTs4SMEs. It is financed by the Interreg IIIB NOrth Sea Programme, the Intercommunale Leiedal (Belgium) and Landkreis Osterholz (ProArbeit kA?R - Germany)