EU Structural Funds represent by far the main source of funding for innovation in general and for e-services in particular in the lagging regions of Europe classified into the “Convergence” objective. We explore for the first time the amount of resources dedicated to public e-Services and Information Society by elaborating European Commission data on programmed resources for the 2007-13 period. Our analysis highlighted a strong heterogeneity in the level of commitment towards e-services development both between and within countries. Such heterogeneity depends not only upon the total amount of resources available, which is connected to the degree of development of the various territories, but also upon different regional strategies.

1. Financing e-services in Europe:
a regional perspective
Luigi Reggi
Department of Economics, Society and Politics, Urbino University and
DG EU Regional Policy, Ministry of Economic Development, Italy
Sergio Scicchitano
Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Rome and
DG EU Regional Policy, Ministry of Economic Development, Italy
itAIS2011
Conference
Rome,
Italy

2. Agenda
• Relevant literature and research objectives
• EU Regional Policy and Information Society
• Empirical method
• Results
• Discussion and conclusions

3. RELEVANT LITERATURE and RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
Regional policies for innovation
• Growing regional percentage of public
expenditure for Research and Innovation in most
OECD countries, especially in those countries where
regional governments have greater autonomy
C3D/EA#
@A6=.#BA931#
>30719?#
;6<=9/1#
839710:#
Source:
Authors’
2345/67# elabora=on
on
OECD
(2011),
-./01# Regional
Development
Policies
in
OECD
!"# $!"# %!"# &!"# '!"# (!"# )!"# *!"# +!"# ,!"# $!!"# Countries

4. RELEVANT LITERATURE and RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
Regional Innovation Systems
• The concept of RIS introduced since the early ’90s as
an extension of the concept of National Innovation
System (NIS)
(Cooke, P. 1992, Cooke and Morgan 1998, Asheim and Isaksen,
1997)
• Three different types of RISs have been identified
(Asheim and Gertler 2004).
– The territorially embedded regional innovation
systems (TERIS), where firms operate without any strong
interaction with knowledge organizations.
– The regionally networked innovation system (RNeIS),
where firms and organizations are still implanted in a
specific region and characterized by localized, interactive
learning.
– The regionalized national innovation system (RNaIS)
where the innovation activity takes place mostly in
cooperation with actors outside the region at a both
national and international level.

5. RELEVANT LITERATURE and RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
Research objective
• To explore the amount of public resources
dedicated to ICT and e-services and the
strategies that European public agencies are
pursuing when allocating funding to local policy
priorities

6. REGIONAL POLICY
Why Regional Policy? (1/2)
• Cohesion
policy:
aims
at
reducing
regional
dispari=es
• Second
item
of
EU
budget:
347
billion
Euros
for
2007-­‐13
period
• It
contributes
to
the
Digital
Agenda
of
EU2020
strategy
• Common EU policy • Multilevel governance
– all EU 27 Countries are Regional and/or National
involved agencies are Managing
– full comparability: same rules Authorities of Operational
and regulations Programmes

7. REGIONAL POLICY
Why Regional Policy? (2/2)
“In
the
2007-­‐2013
planning
period
the
share
of
Structural
Funds
of
the
European
Union
allocated
to
Research
and
Innova.on
(the
“Lisbon
Agenda”)
received
the
largest
increase,
in
absolute
and
relaFve
terms.
It
is
no
exaggeraFon
to
claim
that,
for
many
countries,
the
en.re
Lisbon
Agenda
rests
on
Structural
Funds.”
(Bonaccorsi
A.,
2010,
Towards
beMer
use
of
condi=onality
in
policies
for
research
and
innova=on
under
Structural
Funds:
The
intelligent
policy
challenge,
working
paper
underlying
Barca
Report
“An
agenda
for
the
reformed
Cohesion
Policy.)

8. EMPIRICAL METHOD
Data source
• Data source: official dataset on EU Structural
Funds programmed resources for the period
2007-13 provided by the European
Commission – DG Regional Policy
• It includes data on the amount of financial
resources programmed by 434 Operational
Programmes (OP)

9. EMPIRICAL METHOD
Programmed resources at NUTS2 level
• a matching with the Eurostat database of EU
Regions (NUTS2 level) has been performed in
order to estimate the programmed amount of
resources at regional level.
• total amount of national and multiregional
Programmes has been equally assigned to all
regions directly involved in each Programme)
Total regional resources
=
resources allocated by the regional Programmes
+
share of national or multiregional Programmes
that have an impact on that specific region.

10. EMPIRICAL METHOD
Identifying resources dedicated to
e-services and information society
• How to calculate the contribution of
structural Funds to each priority/sector?
• COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No
1083/2006 general:
86 categories of expenditure
– 6 are dedicated to the information Society and
1 to the E-services

11. RESULTS
Financial resources for Information Society
by category of expenditure
10
Telephone
infrastructures
(including
broadband
networks)
2,257,722,464
15%
11
+
12
Informa=on
and
communica=on
technologies
(including
TEN)
4,121,115,554
27%
13
Services
and
applica>ons
for
ci>zens
(e-­‐health,
e-­‐ 5,225,072,351
34%
government,
e-­‐learning,
e-­‐inclusion,
etc.)
14
Services
and
applica=ons
for
SMEs
(e-­‐commerce,
educa=on
2,144,358,160
14%
and
training,
networking,
etc.)
15
Other
measures
for
improving
access
to
and
efficient
use
of
1,537,162,147
10%
ICT
by
SMEs
15,285,430,676
100%

12. RESULTS
Financial resources for Information Society
by Member State
Resources
allocated
by
Member
State
(in
%)
10.00
%
8.00
%
6.00
%
4.00
%
2.00
%
0.00
%
SK
GR
FI
KR
CK
EE
COOP
LT
PO
FR
EU
(Mean)
SL
IT
PT
HU
RM
ND
SE
UK
DE
BG
LV
BE
DK
IR
LU
AT
MA
ES
%
cat
13
over
tot
SF
%
IS
over
tot.
SF
Note.
Authors’
calcula=ons
on
EC
–
DG
Regio
data

13. RESULTS
Financial resources for Information Society
by Member State
• Significant variation in the amount of resources
dedicated to e-services actions, especially if
compared to the resources dedicated to other IS
themes.
• For example:
• in Spain, Estonia, Malta or Slovak Republic e-
services investment represents more than the
half of IS total investment.
• Sweden, Denmark or Italy, seem to focus on
other priorities classified into the remaining IS
categories of expenditure (10, 11, 12, 14, 15).

14. RESULTS
Financial resources for public e-services
at regional level: a cluster analysis
Goodness
of
variance
fit
(GVF):
aims
at
minimizing
the
squared
devia=ons
of
the
class
means
SSD
=sum
of
squared
difference

15. Financial
resources
for
public
e-­‐services
RESULTS
Financial resources for Information Society
at regional level

16. RESULTS
Financial resources for e-services at
regional level
• In the 1st cluster:
• All the regions in Slovack Republic except
Bratislavsky have planned high investments in e-
services (more than 189 milion of euros)
• Campania (147,5 milion of euros), Andalucia (Spain)
and Attiki (Greece)
• In the 2nd cluster:
• Sardinia in Italy, 3 Spanish, 7 Greek and 10 Polack
Regions, Pas-de-Calais (France), Észak-
Magyarország (Hungary)
• A number of COMP regions decided not to use
structural funds to co-finance e-services development

17. RESULTS
Financial resources for Information Society
at regional level: a cluster analysis
Average amount of
Cluster strong
resources (€)
heterogeneity
Cluster 1 164,164,097
in
the
total
Cluster 2 73,442,227 amount
of
Cluster 3 50,298,301 resources
dedicated
to
Cluster 4 24,043,678
e-­‐services
by
Cluster 5 2,716,310 EU
regions

18. CONCLUSIONS
Conclusions (1/2)
• Compared for the first time the financial
resources dedicated to ICT and e-services at
NUTS2 level
• Regional Policy funding represents a good proxy
of the total amount of resources available to
regional public policies, especially in the
“convergence” objective

19. CONCLUSIONS
Conclusions (2/2)
• Strong heterogeneity in the level of commitment
towards e-services development both between
and within countries
• This is due to:
– huge variation in total amount of resources
available (e.g. CONV vs. CRO objectives),
connected to the degree of development of the
territories
– different regional strategies: focused on e-
services vs. focus on other priority themes

20. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Open questions
• Which strategies are followed by which
kind of agency, Programme, territory,
objective?
• How will these strategies evolve over
time?
• What are the determinants of the
allocation of resources to ICT / e-services?
– Regional context (size, innovation, ICT
diffusion, etc.)
– Other economic variables (amount of
funding, FEIs vs. grants..)

21. Thank you!
Luigi Reggi
luigi.reggi@gmail.com
www.luigireggi.eu