Thematic area: Information Society, Research and Innovation.

EU Programme: Information Society Technologies (IST) / Fifth Framework Programme (FPV)

Name of project: TEDIP: Technology and Economic Development in the Periphery

Lead institution: University of Wales, Cardiff.

Description of the case study:

Introduction:

This was an IST Programme project which explored the possibility of exploiting regional material culture through its digitisation and its promotion as a basis for developing a new regional digital content industry across European peripheral regions. It involved six European regions – Wales, west of Ireland, Trans Danubia, Catalunya, Carinthia and South Savo. It was led by the University of Wales, Cardiff.

Developing the concept:

The original idea arose from prior projects associated with ICT, and an awareness and understanding of New Economy developments. This included (i) parallel work by colleagues within the University, (ii) work on intellectual property rights (IPR) issues as part of the INFO2000 Programme and (iii) an understanding of the technological development which would allow the regional media sector to develop new products in new ways by using the new technology and the principles of the Knowledge Economy.

The central theme was that most ICT sector developments focused upon hardware and software developments and were located in a belt between Stockholm and Helsinki, and a long strip of territory extending from Dublin to Milan. What, then, happens to the other regions, how do they become engaged with the New Economy? Are they obliged to become the periphery of the New Economy, becoming the source of displaced labour for the New Economy? Considerable background knowledge was needed about the nature of the New Economy, the nature of the economic restructuring associated with its appearance, and how this varied across space within Europe.

The Centre is funded solely by research, so the staff are constantly searching for research opportunities. They are assisted by the University, which provides periodic listings of opportunities for all members of staff and departments. The centre developed an area of expertise, tending to focus on specific EU Programmes and the associated calls. Nonetheless there are probably some Programmes and calls that it is not familiar with, especially given that the EU moves from one framework to the next. The most evident aspects of experience entail developing expertise in specific areas of research and developing a network of collaborators. It would be ideal if network members took turns in developing proposals, but this rarely happens and there is a lot of free loading.

Once a call is announced the centre first downloads all the relevant documentation. This is read very carefully in order to ascertain precisely what the call is looking for, before starting to think about the design of the proposal. This requires relevant literature searches which not only inform the project, but also ensure that the work is up to date and takes existing problems forward.

The Centre was fortunate in being able to draw upon the expertise and time of others in the University. Members of staff could be incorporated into the project and their time used as matched funding. This has to be recorded regularly on relevant time sheets, and is what is meant by ‘self funding’. Social partners in the region may also be drawn in under the heading of matched funding. Thus, for example, a broadcaster may wish to explore new dimensions and will contribute time or even money. It may already contribute money towards a digital archive which can then be used for this purpose. Similarly regional funds from non-EU source such as the UK Lottery Fund or the state’s Research Council may function as other sources of funding. Coordinating the respective sources of funding, so that one can be used as bait for the other, is recommended, but it is a difficult task.

The significance of the IST Programme lay in a Report, commissioned by them prior to the call, which was a response to the complaint that more attention should be given to the integration of technology in society and the economy. The call seemed to address this specific issue, so that the proposal had to focus on such concerns. This context replaced the usual need for discussion with similar project developers. The academic community tends to monitor others working in the same field. Numerous research reports available on the Cordis website are also useful.

All this helps the theme to be developed and the beneficiaries and stakeholders to be identified. Regional stakeholders have to be integrated wherever possible. Thus, for example, in the Leonardo programme it is difficult for any research or learning agency to engage with developing a project unless it falls in line with the vocational training developments of the state, which is often in the hands of a few agencies. In this specific case the theme was sufficiently novel to warrant the development of entirely new partnerships: memory institutions, broadcasters, print media and independent producers. How such a partnership could be put together was part of the study task. Since it was so new it was not necessary to contact and develop the partnership. However we did encounter some animosity, a few tending to guard their assets. Whereas Universities are obliged to undertake research and constantly look for funds, they try and engage public or private sector institutions who may well feel that they can do a better job. Similarly among Universities there are always those who are trying to look after what they may feel is ‘their patch’. Also, once the relevant partnership was put in place it was not easy to influence developments with the findings of our own research, since this would impinge on their expertise and knowledge. Indeed any criticism was coldly received. If possible it is always best to include the beneficiaries in the research design. However, they will then tend to expect some of the financial benefit and a piece of the work.

The relevance for Regional and Minority Language (RML) groups derived from the peripheral location of most within the EC, and from the opportunity afforded by using regional cultural resources for economic purposes with the new technology. This implied a link between language and culture in the form of music, dance, film, art, etc. The principle of path dependency suggests that the future economic orientation of any region will derive, in part, from the skills and competencies associated with previous phases of economic activity. This was particularly relevant for regions which had an established regional media presence: the convergence of the web and broadcasting channels was leading to an entirely new understanding of the role of media in social and cultural life.

The Knowledge Economy differs from industrial age economy in how the focus for growth is on the generation of knowledge – which is seen as an asset - and its relationship to innovation. At the heart of the generation of knowledge is the concept of a community of practitioners who share a similar process of meaning construction. Shared meaning and mutual trust are fundamentally important. This gives another link to language.

We had already been involved in developing a resource locator which allowed cultural materials – photographs, documents, film etc. - to be tagged, indexed and stored and retrieved electronically. This technology should allow firms working in quite different places to share resources, and to move them electronically from one location to another. The development of the semantic web was rapidly creating the basis for working on-line using these shared resources. But to what extent were regions developing the capacity to reach this situation? Such trans–regional work was thought essential, since no single region would have sufficient diversity of digital cultural resources to enter the global content market on its own. This was the BIG IDEA associated with the project. The problem was how to make this background relevant for the details of the call, rather than what the applicants wanted to do.

These two issues – what the call asks for and what the applicant wants to do - are often in contradiction, and there is little value in forcing a call to fit into what the potential applicant might want to do. Calls have a very specific context. They tend to constitute one small piece of a much larger jigsaw. Thus the IST Programme has an overall conception or model of the development of the New Economy and the Information Society in Europe, constructed out of an understanding of three things: the nature of the economy, the technology and the political philosophy which drives policy. The model is broken up into constituent parts, the different strands of the Programme, which are further broken down into the bases for each call. Once tested and verified, the bits and pieces are implemented through the various eEurope initiatives where the member states agree to fulfil their commitments in the various protocols. Thus the IST Programme projects become the laboratory which should inform what states and regions put into practice.

In short, it is important to understand the theoretical problematic and the political philosophy that informs the IST Programme before developing a response to the call. This is not as daunting as might appear: it derives from the more general work operating within the academic community and expanding into the research undertaken by key bodies such as OECD or Eurostat.

Partner Selection:

All of the partners had previously worked with the lead partner on various projects, so they were fairly confident that they could work as a team. Moreover, decisions could be taken fairly quickly in each institution. This is important: the time between the publishing of the call and the deadline for submission is often very short. A delay within any of the institutions in completing and returning their documentation can make it impossible to meet the deadline. Documents have to be signed, and there is often a limitation on who is authorized to sign for an institution. It is important that work begins on partner selection as soon as possible, and previous collaboration and/or experience with EU projects is a help.

The partners were chosen for what they could contribute to the project once it had been designed. This was reflected in the leadership responsibility for the different work packages:

• A regional development agency – Údarás na Gaeltachta in Ireland;
• A University specialising in on-line learning provision – University of Savonlinna in Finland.
• A University specialising in communication studies – University Ramon Llull in Catalonia.
• A University with expertise in ICT-based business modelling – University of Klagenfurt in Austria.
• A University from among the new accession states with a strong business focus – St. Stephen’s University, Hungary.

As already stated, the lead partner had been working on the Knowledge Economy and with technological issues associated with New Media. Together these specialisations complemented one another. Two regions did not have autochthonous RML groups, but were examples of small state languages with limited significance outside the two states in question – Hungary and Finland.

It seems that in all partnerships, especially those where a single (or maybe two) partners have developed the proposal, the other partners will for a time be unclear as to the precise objectives of the project and as to their role in it. With time team integration develops. During this early period the lead partner has to be patient and help the other partners as much as necessary.

On reflection greater consideration should have been given to the regions, as well as to the expertise of the respective collaborating institutions. Some regions did not have a strong regional media presence, and were therefore unlikely to develop the New Economy emphasis as implied in the proposal. But looking for new partners, who could provide what was required, even if it was recognised at the pre-project phase, would have been time-consuming.

The project was designed to include a website which was to serve as the main means of communication across the partnership. This is where we quarrelled and argued, praised each other, placed our documents, criticised them, communicated as individuals and as groups and allowed the public to know what we were doing. The site was designed by the University of Savonlinna and was extremely valuable.

Proposal Development:

Most of the framework for the proposal had been developed before recruiting the partners. The partners could clearly see the aim of the project and their specific role in it, but there was little scope for them to construct the proposal. Given the short deadline, an integrated role in proposal development is only possible if the pre-call listings are carefully monitored. These are indications provided at the very beginning of a five-year Framework programme, about the issues which are likely to be called and the likely calendar.

The proposal itself has to be clear, yet clever. It has to be made understandable to the reviewers while also demonstrating an innovative approach. The Programme is administered by Sections which draw on the help of experts to assess the different proposals. They will meet in Brussels or Luxembourg for two or three days, so as to reach decisions about the proposals.

We suspect that our proposal was attractive to those responsible for project selection because of:

i. how it addressed the issues of a New Economy periphery, a concept contesting the claim that the new technology causes the ‘death of distance’ – the claim that the new technology breaks down the effect of distance in industrial age economy and will result in the amelioration and even disappearance of the core-periphery disparity;
ii. how it involved regional economies;
iii. how it integrated the new technology with the socio-economic context.

Furthermore it explored the future in a creative way.
If this is correct, then the outcome of the project would be of value to a range of players including regional developers, technology developers, media agencies etc. etc. This had to be built into the proposal in the package on handling dissemination. Informing people about the project is one thing, but it was also very important to target people who could apply the results of the project. Thus the dissemination strategy had two components: a general way of advertising the project (flyers, web site etc.), and a targeted event in Brussels at the end of the project, to which the expected end-users were to be invited.

It is worth mentioning that little direct reference was made in the proposal to RML groups, for the problem was constructed so as to be implicit in the proposal. That is, the project was not conceived of as an RML group project but there was no way that such groups would not benefit from the outcome. Thus, the project was written from and RML group perspective, but the group was treated as an asset rather than as a problem. Thus, that the work incorporated RML groups was treated as entirely normal. It was made clear in the proposal that they were expected to benefit from the outcome and that this benefit would filter through to everyone in the respective regions, and not merely to speakers of the RML.

The various parts of the proposal should constitute a narrative that clearly tells the story of what is required to be done. In this respect it involves:

i. the rationale for the work and how it develops off previous work;
ii. the problems which it seeks to address and how these problems will be handled in the proposal design;
iii. issues of validity and reliability of the data;
iv. and the work programme.

The work programme was presented as a series of discrete work packages indicating the objective, the various work tasks to be completed, milestones or key events in the life of the work package, the start and end date and the deliverables for each work package. The format for this is provided by the funding Programme. This becomes the template for the organisation and management of the project when being implemented.

The roles of the partners were specified in a number of ways:

• Indicating their responsibilities for different parts of the work.
• Indicating their role in all work packages, including the amount of labour input.
• The amount of the funding allocated to them.

Within the TEDIP project this led to each partner developing responsibility and accountability within a distributed context. The work plan was designed so that it allowed all partners to participate during the whole project. This had the advantage of giving each partner a sense of ‘ownership’ of the project. Each partner was asked to lead a particular work package, on the basis of their particular expertise.

Once the project was selected for funding the DG called a meeting to discuss the project. All partners were expected to attend. The difficulty here was that these costs were not budgeted and had to be met from the funds of each partner. At this meeting we were told that we had too many work packages in the proposal and we cut these down at the meeting. There is often an instruction to reduce the budget. If this occurs it is always best to reduce the amount of work proportionally rather than to think that the project is so worthwhile that all the planned work must be done. Too much work with too few resources merely places extra burden on everyone.

The proposal was written and submitted in English. This tends to be the default language across Europe. Indeed one increasingly sees some Directorate General discreetly insisting on the use of English; others try and direct one towards either French or English; still others recommend English, French or German. The distance between having the ability to use any official language and practice is often quite subtle. All of the partners had staff members fluent in English. Furthermore, most of the partners also had other languages in common.

The literature review came from two main sources – the EU-funded work referred to above and on-going research, mainly among academic institutions. The formulation of the problem tends to draw on academic sources whereas the most up to date applied work comes from the EU. Those assessing the project will expect to find a thorough review of the literature. On the other hand this has to be contextualised: there is little purpose in undertaking a literature review for its own sake. No letters of support were collected but they can be useful and are, in some cases, essential.

All EU projects require what is called ‘added value’. This means that there is more value to undertaking work in several states than doing it in one location. This can sometimes be built into the design: in the TEDIP project we argued that centralised states and devolved ones would have different strategies for partnership development and the creation of digital archives. We thus had to undertake the work in both kinds of states and to develop arguments for these different kinds of states. From this it became possible to generalise across the whole of Europe, so that the outcome could be used for policy purposes.

In principle this seems fairly straightforward. But in practice it takes some time before all of the partners are fully able to grasp the intention of a proposal which they have not been centrally involved in designing. Sometimes this is because they come from different disciplines and different areas of expertise and need more background information to contextualise the work and their role in it. Creating a working partnership does not happen overnight. It means that during the early phase much of the development work has to be assumed by the lead partner. Once the project is fully understood by each partner, they can all begin to drive the different work packages and to play a lead role with regard to each other. This process is important; it helps to break down any vertical relationships between the lead partner and the others, thereby creating an environment which facilitates the development of mutual trust and respect.

If possible the draft proposal should be circulated across the entire partnership and comments invited from them. This is particularly important when it comes to the budget. There is nothing worse than partners who feel that they are not receiving a fair share of the cake. We tend to allocate the same rate per unit of work regardless of the staff costs in the different locations. This does not always go down well with the Commission. We also try and allocate the same amount of work to everyone. Where this is not possible we try and include all partners in the various project meetings and specify that their specialised work will only be expected at specific times in the project history. The lead partner is usually responsible for administering the project and will require more funding than the others. There is usually a period at the start, before the first payment is transferred. During this period the partners have to rely on their own reserves to pay staff, travel, etc.

At key stages in the development of the project face to face meetings between the partners are necessary. The proposal was designed so that various partner institutions hosted these meetings. This allowed all the partners to become of familiar with each local and regional context. The meetings lasted two days and involved intense discussion of development, results and reporting. These events help to transform a network into a community. They must all be built into the project design and budget.

Reporting:

There are various aspects of reporting which must be strictly adhered to. This involves the following fundamental parts of any project:

• Financial reporting, which is the responsibility of each institution on a periodic basis.
• Deliverables are necessary for each work package and are listed in the technical annex for the project. The main issue to be decided here is whether to have a single report prepared by the coordinator, the person responsible for the WP or someone else, or whether to have each partner preparing individual reports. The action taken will depend upon the nature of the deliverable.
• Management Reports are the responsible of the lead partner and must be completed regularly to a set pattern. It may be necessary for each partner to contribute to this aspect of reporting.
• Progress Reports refer to the development trajectory of the project. Such reports inform the EU coordinator as to the progress of the project and any difficulties that have or may arise.

The Project Web Site:

Most EU projects develop a project web site. This was the case with the TEDIP project, and it was important to include this in the work packages and budget. Its web site was the communication centre for the entire project and it channelled almost all of the communication between individuals and centres. The reports, working papers references etc., were posted on the site. These could be linked to a threaded discussion space so that everyone could discuss the documents openly. The site also had a calendar of events and threaded discussion spaces for developing reports, for discussing the scheduling of events and similar issues. It was an invaluable component of the project.

One option is to give the project minder (the person from the European Commission who monitors the project) access to this site. This would ensure complete transparency, but it might make partners more reluctant to be frank and open in their contributions. The same issue arises when deciding which parts of the web site are opened to the public. It is usually desirable that public and private spaces are incorporated in the design.

Dissemination:

Dissemination is that part of the project which constitutes the interface between project and partners, and public and end-user. It is regarded by the Commission as extremely important: it helps make the use of public funds more transparent. It involves different components and takes different forms. The essence of a dissemination strategy is sensitivity to using different communication channels to target different recipients.

First there is a need to try and ensure that the public – and especially the public in the participating regions - is informed about the work. Local and regional outlets such as newspapers, web sites, broadcasting etc., should be targeted. Usually they are only too glad of information which they can use.

Beyond this regional and local context there is the global interest. This is where the website becomes an important means of dissemination: it is global in nature and there may be considerable interest in the work being done. Public areas which provide information about the project and its progress should be made available. It might also be advisable to include a public forum where information with other similar projects can be exchanged for the benefit of all.

The political representatives for the region should be informed. They will see the advantages which can be gained for the region, themselves and their parties from an engagement with the project and its outcomes. It is likely that the work of the project will dovetail with some aspect of public policy in the region and also with regional agencies which are involved in similar activity. The TEDIP project involved regional development authorities, media companies and broadcasters, museums, libraries and regional assemblies. One of the work packages in the project involved consultation with regional stakeholders in the digital value chain, so this was a relatively easy task.

Academic institutions which are which are locked into relatively narrow global networks often mistakenly focus on their own domain. Certainly there is a need to target the customary academic outlets – publishing in journals, books, conference participation. But it is just a relatively minor component of the dissemination network relevant to EU projects. Academic networks rarely have the capacity to transform research results into policy and practice.

More information:

Address:
Dr. Glyn Williams
Tel.: 44 1248 430340
Fax: 44 1248 430340
E-mail: sos004@bangor.ac.uk
URL: http://www.cf.ac.uk/cass/projects/tedip.pdf