eGOVREGIO is based on the belief that eGovernment, as a certain facet of Information Society, can improve the organizational efficiency of Public Administration, lead to decentralization and democratization of the decision making and policy formulation process and, ultimately, boost the economic and regional development.
eGOVREGIO is based on the belief that eGovernment, as a certain facet of Information Society, can improve the organizational efficiency of Public Administration, lead to decentralization and democratization of the decision making and policy formulation process and, ultimately, boost the economic and regional development.
It aims to improve the relevant eGovernment initiatives adopted by local and regional authorities in the participating areas, focusing primarily to "soft" actions of the initiatives under consideration, such as: strategic planning, benchmarking, organizational change, personnel training and enriching job positions. These enhancement actions will be the basis for Transregional cooperation, in order to exploit the existing knowledge that is dispersed throughout Europe .
The project that has been assigned to TREK Consulting after an international tender, aims to reinforce and support the Prefectural Authority of Thessaloniki in the implementation and the management of eGovregio actions.
More specifically, the tasks that TREK Consulting has undertaken are:
- Support for the coordination and the management of the project: It involves the planning and organization of monitoring processes for the implementation progress of the responsibilities of the Prefectural Authority of Thessaloniki, as well as verification processes for the deliverables and responsibilities of all partners (including the Prefectural Authority of Thessaloniki) that are co-financed by eGOVREGIO.
- Ex-ante and Ex-post evaluation of the project: This action includes (a) the ex-ante evaluation of the expected impacts of the Strategic and Operational Plans that will be formulated in the framework of Work Package 3, and (b) the final evaluation that aims at the evaluation of the impacts of the whole project, the assessment of the effectiveness of the planned actions (follow-up plan), the evaluation of the outputs and results of the project and the overall overview of the completion and synergy of all actions.
- Existing Situation Analysis - Synthetic Diagnosis - Comparative Evaluation of the Prefectural Authority of Thessaloniki and Best Practices Research in eGovernment for Regional Development: It includes the research for good, relevant practices at a local / regional, national and European level, the identification of benchmarks and the comparative evaluation of the Prefecture of Thessaloniki to them.
- Formulation of the Methodological Framework for Regional Development and Transregional Cooperation: It includes the development of an appropriate methodology for measuring the readiness and performance of local / regional authorities in respect to eGovernment. The methodology will include a questionnaire and will lead to the formulation of a matrix with two axes: readiness of the entities and performance. The relevant methodological tools will be proper for the self-evaluation of the participating and other authorities, so that they can, then, support the formulation of strategic and operational plans, depending on each authority's profile. It also includes the supply of guidelines for the Prefecture of Thessaloniki and the rest of the partners for the formulation of their Strategic & Operational Plans (methodology, specifications, frame, table of contents, etc.)
- Planning & Development of a Pilot eGovernment Platform in the Prefectural Authority of Thessaloniki : The platform under formulation will be defined by requirements (functional and technical) that will be given by the Prefectural Authority of Thessaloniki. TREK will then undertake the following tasks: a) design of interfaces, databases and applications, b) software development, c) integration of content and finalization, d) pilot testing and e) training of administrators.