:: An ICT based Regional Cooperation Environment for Southeastern Europe
    - Concept paper

Justification

Information and communication technology (ICT) is widely recognized as a potentially powerful tool in the fight against poverty, with the capacity to provide developing countries with an unprecedented opportunity to meet vital development goals such as poverty reduction, basic health care, and education, far more effectively than before. Countries that succeed in harnessing the potential of ICT can look forward to greatly accelerating economic growth, dramatically improving human welfare, and fostering good governance practices.

The ICT issue was recently brought to the forefront of the international development agenda. ICT, which transcends national borders and makes knowledge more important than physical assets, is now acknowledged to have the potential to seriously widen the gap between people with access to the information economy and those without.

The Country Gateways aim at supporting the bridging of this gap by facilitating access and exchange of information between civil society organizations, private sector, media, academic and governments to design adequate projects.

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The Project

"An ICT based Regional Cooperation Environment for Southeastern Europe" aimes at fostering regional cooperation by creating a virtual, interactive environment for business, media and academic exchanges within the SEE perimeter. The project is addressed to private and public sectors from Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania. Later on, one can extend the project in other SE Europe countries as well. It will be implemented with the valuable support and expertise of individuals and organizations from each country.

The basic idea is to develop an environment able to provide within a number of regional networks (gathering organizations and individuals) resources such as virtual collaboration tools, data base and information management, support for periodical meeting, connections with western institutions with interests in the field, etc. The ultimate result will be knowledge for development (research, information data bases plus valuable human regional networks), that is an opportunity to improve the regional cooperation and information exchange in order to speed up the profound modernization processes throughout SE Europe.

These three countries are not only situated in the same geographic region but they also have similar backgrounds and face almost the same challenges, though they have different stages of development. This is why they should cooperate, share experiences and learn from each other.

The Project will focus on the following activities:

1. Designing and setting up the regional portal
The design is a process of gathering and organizing information on the structure of the portal. The portal will be a demonstration center to display facilitation of communication, and methods to increase learning opportunities and knowledge exchange for development practitioners within and outside the region. It will also provide a place where the use, dissemination, and adoption of ICT will be available and on display and will enhance the ICT-related knowledge within the region. Therefore, improvement in dissemination and use of information and knowledge for development through ICT should be one of the priorities.

The portal's sites will be structured on communities, acting as resource centers, on the following issues:

a) Business environment
b) Freedom of information and Media policies
c) Public administration reform
d) Development of NGO sector
e) Knowledge for development
f) Strategies for promoting knowledge-based economy
g) e-Readiness
h) Distance learning center - quality training stages (short courses, seminars, workshops) using primarily a Distance Learning approach in order to cut costs and increase efficiency.

The above-mentioned online communities will contribute to elaborate an appropriate awareness-building program for all segments of society to promote ICT and its role in development and to develop appropriate assessments and recommendations. By sharing information, knowledge, and expertise, through regional cooperation, the three countries should also be able to amplify their domestic development efforts. Special emphasis will also be placed on regional cooperation in the context of regional sharing of knowledge and information through ICT, and learning from the experiences of other ICT key players and stakeholders.

Each community will also have the opportunity to interact with other similar communities / think tanks from the Country Gateways network as well as from Western and more advanced countries. Outside the regional connections which will be established under this umbrella one will aim to include leading western think tanks or research organizations which can bring in know how and additional resources.

For example "Freedom House", a leading American NGO supporting democratic processes in the world, expressed the interest for developing a regional Media Sustainability Index for SE Europe and a Bucharest based Center for Independent Journalism will also back the project. One can establish here, using the already existent facilities, a regional distance learning center - within the context of the World Bank Global Learning Development Network (GDLN) project.

2. Working groups
During the first phase of the project, a workshop will be organized, aiming at setting up the working groups that will define the ground rules and the activity plan. Working groups will be set up for each identified regional community. The activities of the Working groups will be reported periodically, when the progress reports presented by the Working groups and follow-up to the results of the previous could be discussed.

3. Regional workshop
The workshop aims at evaluating the results of the project and spreading out the best practice models regarding the Internet based communities and their role in strengthening the cross border cooperation.

4. Development of the portal
The emphasis will be on offering a very dynamic platform through creating relevant and useful information and services.

Each community - resource center will comprise:

• standard database for storing the relevant information related to each topic
• forums for sharing knowledge and experience
• relevant documents and reports (including comparative research studies on the three countries) produced by the working group
• calendar of events
• other resources generated by each community

5. Disseminating the information and the results
The information gathered by each community as well as the results of the activities carried away by each community will be disseminated to relevant and interested organizations/ institutions/ individuals from the three countries. Each country will also organize thematic workshops (domestic or regional) for discussing the issues and disseminating the main findings.

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Project results

- Development of regional think tanks
The project will contribute to strengthen the capacity of reaction and intervention of the think tanks.

- Strengthening the cross border cooperation
The activities carried within the project will enhance the collaboration and exchange of information between the business, media and academic from the three countries.

- Elaborating comparative reports
The activity of each working group will be finalized into comparative reports to be used for identifying the development directions.

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Partners

Bulgaria Development Gateway

Croatia Development Gateway

NECOMM net (as a technology partner and as an initial developer of the barem.net portal promoting regional cooperation projects)

eRomania Gateway (eRG) is a not-for-profit organization, its mission being to promote and support the e-development in Romania. Established in November 2001, the Association is an open partnership between the public sector (represented by the Romanian Government as a founding member and under the umbrella of the Romanian Presidency), the business community and civil society organizations.

Specific objectives include:

• to develop and manage a leading portal on Romania, "Romania Development Gateway" (RDG), within the context of World Bank's "Development Gateways" (DG) initiative, which aims to assist countries in establishing a presence on the Internet through Country Gateway portals;
• to assist the Romanian Government and Romania in general in drawing-up and implementing various initiatives part of the national information strategy, presenting them with clear guidelines guarantees so that they will be successfully implemented in a medium and long- term perspective;
• to conduct public awareness campaigns on IC&Ts impact on economy, education, and society as a whole.
  

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