Digital territories in PACA: getting local partnerships 'in the loop'

Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France

SYNTHESIS

Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) is a French region whose various sub-regions are markedly different from a number of points of view (topographical, demographic, economic, etc.). In the French context, local areas can be classified as a ‘pays’1, a voluntary governance structure for a specific local area grouping: municipal and local authorities, local development organisations, natural parks, etc.

The concept of 'territories' is relatively recent in France. The Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Regional Council understood early (thanks to its Regional Innovative Action Programme co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund which terminated at the end of 2005) that the building up of the region's 'territories' could be supported through developing digital solutions that, improve local communications, on the one hand, and help these local partnerships gain credibility as a new sub-regional force for action, on the other.

As the manager of a global subsidy from the ERDF in the framework of the Objective 2 programme during 2000-2006, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Regional Council created a ‘Digital Territories – Usage and Services’ and ‘Alternative Local Loops2 Infrastructures’ framework programme aimed at developing digital systems at the regional level, based on the action of the 'territories'.

This framework programme launched calls for projects relating to ‘Digital Territories’ or ‘Alternative Local Loops’ or both types of actions combined. Eighty-four projects in total were selected between July 2004 and July 2006. To be selected, these projects had to fit into the global strategy and offer a credible plan of action as well as self-finance at least 20% of the total amount. To facilitate the emergence of quality projects, the Regional Council offered the sponsors methodological, technical, legal and financial support provided by consultants acting as assistants to the contracting authority during the preparation and implementation phases.

Of the 84 projects supported, 42 were Digital Territories projects and 42 were Alternative Local Loops projects, which were supplemented by six projects outside the Objective 2 zone and therefore without financing from the ERDF. The supported projects were eligible for financing up to a total maximum budget of €125,000, which is generally sufficient for the size and nature of the projects. The co-financing can cover up to 80% of the eligible spending in the ERDF Objective 2 zones (ERDF 50% and 30% from the Regional Council and/or the State) and 30% (Regional Council only) for territories non-eligible for Objective 2. In the latter case only strategic diagnostic studies and the development of a ‘local plan for the digital development of the territory’ were funded. As an example, the programme

1 Literally translated 'pays' means country, but in the French local development concept it stands for a micro- or small- region normally one that is naturally defined (e.g. a valley, or a region with specific rural characteristics) as opposed to one that is defined by legally recognised administrative boundaries. 2 In telephony, the local loop (also referred to as a subscriber line) is the physical link or circuit that connects from the demarcation point of the customer premises to the edge of the carrier, or telecommunications service provider, network. financed e-tourism projects, geographical information systems (GIS) or e-culture projects under the Digital Territory actions as well as WIFI or powerline communications projects for the Digital Local Loops actions.

The approach made it possible to provide a global framework while offering flexibility of design and implementation. The choice of a framework programme that set the main orientations (top down) in tandem with calls for applications (bottom up) allowed the emergence of projects suited to the territories’ situation. Secondly, the possibility of working either on the development of uses and services (Digital Territories) or on broadband Internet telecommunication infrastructure (Alternative Local Loops) separately or jointly offered the required flexibility to allow the territories’ elected representatives and technical experts to better understand and adapt the programme’s goals to their needs. The enthusiasm generated led to an over-run by 19% of the initially planned budget (€8,840,000) to a figure of €10,530,435.

The supported projects were not innovative per se; in contrast, the method itself was innovative, especially as some actors who usually intervene later in the process were invited to participate in the communication actions very early. This was the case with the financial audit body, but also with the paying authority to a lesser degree.

This method became considered as a good practice during the programme, and it was rapidly adopted in zones outside the ERDF Objective 2 and even in some municipalities in Rhône-Alpes (a bordering region) as well as in other French regions (Rhône-Alpes and Nord-Pas-de-Calais).

Background information

Country: France Region: PACA (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur) Project title: Digital Territories and Alternative Local Loops

Key words: information society, local development

Duration of project: July 2004 – December 2006

Funding: total budget €8,840,000 ERDF contribution €4,240,000 national budget €576,000 regional budget €1,650,000 private contribution €385,000 other counterparts €1,629,000

ERDF objective: Objective 2

2 1. PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Digital Territories and Alternative Local Loops framework programme was set up based on the mid-term review of the ERDF Objective 2 programme, thanks to experimental actions co-financed by the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region and the ERDF in the context of the Regional Innovative Action Programme (2002-2005). As PACA, like other regions in France, was quite late in implementing the mainstream Objective 2 programme, it was possible to design and launch these new measures in the context of strategic axes of the revised programme, namely two measures: ‘favour the development of broadband services throughout the territory’; and ‘build digital territories projects'..

The management authorities for the Alternative Local Loops and Digital Territories programmes are the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Regional Council, the manager of the global subsidy of the ERDF programme and the State representative (Prefecture of the PACA Region). In the framework of these initiatives, they opted to entrust local actors with the task of defining, proposing and implementing the actions which appeared the most appropriate to them while offering them methodological, administrative, financial and legal support in the form of the availability of consultants who played the role of assistants to the contracting authority. The budgets allocated to the Alternative Local Loop and Digital Territories programme were €5m and €3.84m respectively.

This framework programme has allowed the emergence of consistent but diversified initiatives depending on needs, and the choices and situations of the territories, which are generally set up as ‘pays’. The concept of a ‘pays’ is a recent creation in France (end of the 1990s). These facilitating structures, which are most frequently established as an association under the law of 1901 (non-profit making organisations) bring together the elected representatives and economic, social, cultural or associative actors in a partnership that reflects on the territorial development to be undertaken (but which does not make any official decision). The 'pays' issue opinions and proposals and support bottom-up projects. The decisions to act or not to act depend on the communes or inter-communal authorities. A ‘Pays charter’ is normally adopted which make it possible to determine the key issues and goals of the pays. Finally, a Pays contract can be signed between the pays, the group of local authorities, department, region or the State when the key issues are clearly identified.

To illustrate the concept of a pays, the example of the 'Pays de Haute Provence' can be used, this 'pays' brings together 44 communes in six inter-communal bodies, plus five isolated communes, and covers a surface area of 60,000 ha. In Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, the pays are looking for legitimacy, credibility and practical action plans. This is why the calls for applications led to a positive and rapid response.

Eighty-four projects in total were selected and financed by 31 December 2006 (42 Alternative Local Loops and 42 Digital Territories: 80% of the latter benefited from help from the contracting authority assistants), which were supplemented by six Digital Territories projects outside the Objective 2 zone. The latter therefore did not receive support from the ERDF, but demonstrated the interest of the framework programme initiative and the method used. Initially endowed with a total budget of €8,840,000, the programme finally committed a sum of €10,530,435 (+ 19%) in mid 2007 by incorporating

3 non ERDF zones which wished to benefit from the same type of programme and by supporting projects in the eligible zone beyond what had been hoped for. The selection process was based on three successive stages: - auditing of the eligibility of the project sponsor and the project’s relevance to the programme (on the basis of a declaration of intention by the candidate project); - presentation of the application file with the help of contracting authority assistants for the strategic approach, the definition of an admissible proposal as well as building a plan of action. The contracting authority assistants do not always work on all of these points for a given territory, but they have systematically checked that all of these points were consistent; - financing provided by the ERDF (50%), national or regional funds (30%) or funds from the territories themselves or (more rarely) from the private sector (20%). Before the launch of the call for applications but also during the application procedure, regular communication aimed at all of the actors, the ERDF global subsidy manager (the Regional Council), its partner (the State), the financial audit body (CNASEA)3, the intermediaries (pays, contracting authority assistants, etc.) enabled decision-makers (the elected representatives) to understand the key issues, to integrate them to the policy process and to make them levers for territorial development. Each party at its own level took part in the communication and awareness raising actions which simultaneously dealt with the substance (in the value of developing digital systems, the presentation of the different possible systems, etc.) and the form (financing conditions, payment deadlines, how to put together applications, etc).

2. POLITICAL AND STRATEGIC CONTEXT

The PACA region (4,743,000 inhabitants, 963 communes, six departments, 32,838 km², 62% of whose territory was eligible under ERDF Objective 2 between 2000 and 2006) is characterised by a significant diversity of geographical and demographic situations. The Mediterranean coast and the lower Rhône valley are urbanised and concentrate the main urban, tourist and industrial agglomerations of the region, whereas the remainder of the territory is mountainous (three departments out of the six are in the Alps mountain range). This situation creates major disparities in situation between the pays and in particular in terms of access to the information society.

The Regional Innovative Action Programme, which was concluded at the end of 2005, was entitled ‘For a generalised appropriation of the information society in enclave and disadvantaged zones’. It acted as a laboratory and allowed the structuring of the network of Regional Citizen Internet Spaces (public access areas to the Internet) and the establishment of a generalised call for applications process for projects working on uses and digital

3 CNASEA is a national public body under the aegis of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Employment. Among its activities, looking after payments of public grants is at the heart of CNASEA’s role. It intervenes on behalf of the State, the European Union and the territorial communities and other public bodies. It also acts as an audit body in an area for which it has acquired considerable expertise, especially through tracking European programmes. See: www.cnasea.fr

4 services for territories and citizens. It also experimented with alternative modes for broadband access in mountainous zones where this access is economically viable.

On this basis and in the context of the ERDF programme review, the Region-State partners developed two pillars to support the development of digital uses and services (Digital Territories) and infrastructure (Alternative Local Loops).

The territories were the contracting authorities for the projects and the arrangement allowed the project sponsors to benefit from support from contracting authority assistants, who were decisive in the projects’ success. According to the information and communication technology (ICT) officer for Pays de Forcalquier, this choice was made because the following observations were made: - ‘the transversal issues involved in the development of ICT cut across the competencies of the inter-communal bodies; - the project territories (pays, communities of agglomerations, etc.) have the capacity to facilitate development projects incorporating ICTs but lack the resources, especially in engineering, to develop these policies; - moreover, some local ICT projects are already facilitated or sponsored by the inter- communal bodies, especially the nature parks, in the context of Leader+ programmes.’

In June 2007, the PACA Regional Council adopted its Regional Information Society Development plan which is based on three pillars:

The first asserts the regional wish to ensure that every citizen in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur can benefit from information society tools in his daily personal or professional life.

The second pillar recognises that public policies on the information society will only be useful and efficient if they are coordinated between the various public and private actors. The Region will therefore implement the tools required for this concentration and coordination in keeping with this plan.

The third pillar concerns creativity and innovation. The Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Region benefits from a genuine economic dynamism in the information technologies sectors. However, the Region’s action will also affect associations, SMEs and micro- enterprises and public services which must benefit as far as possible from the opportunities offered by ICT for their business.

This work and the decisions also made it possible to prepare the operational programme for the ERDF programming period 2007-2013, which assigns digital systems a central place in territorial development.

5 3. IMPLEMENTATION

3.1. Project design and planning The measure 3.8 ‘Development of the information society: uses and services to develop territories’ in the revised ERDF programme planned to select and finance projects through calls for applications aimed at pays, Communities of Agglomerations, etc.:

(1) a ‘Digital Territories’ call for applications aimed to sponsor ICT projects at the level of the project territories and inter-communal bodies; (2) a call for applications on the ‘Alternative Local Loops’ topic involved supporting innovative projects, which make it possible to experiment and to validate solutions to offer broadband to users who do not traditional receive services from telecommunications operators.

The two themes, Digital Territories and Alternative Local Loops, are closely linked. Projects tackling jointly with these two themes were particularly welcome.

These calls for applications were organised from 12 July 2004 to 28 July 2006, in six waves.

3.2. Management, monitoring and evaluation system The PACA Regional Council’s ICT Mission acts as the contracting authority for the Digital Territories and Alternative Local Loops programmes, and has also made contracting authority assistants available for four days to project sponsors in the initial phase. They intervened at different levels: i) pre-diagnosis; ii) assistance in defining a detailed engineering study; iii) assistance with the technical feasibility of the experiment.

The call for applications was organised in three phases: - Phase 1 – declaration of an application: presentation of the ICT projects supported by the territory and objectives in terms of local development; - Phase 2 – the actual application file: the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Regional Council helped by the contracting authority assistant can direct the proposal towards a technical or economic feasibility study or towards a strategic diagnosis study at territory level (local territorial digital development programme), which will lead to an action plan and a contract setting quantitative goals to be reached in return for financial support that allows projects to be selected; - Phase 3 – financing and launch of the selected projects.

3.3. Governance: partnership and leadership The PACA Regional Council as the manager of the overall ERDF subsidy is the leader in this programme. However, an ad hoc steering committee monitors the entire process closely.

This steering and programming committee is chaired by the regional councillor responsible for ICT. It is made up of the Europe officer from the General Service for Regional Affairs (GSRA), the GSRA’s official ICT representative, and representatives from the six 'sub- regional departments' (Europe and/or ICT services).

6 CNASEA and the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations4, which are the paying authority and the certifying body respectively, are also involved (in the context of their audit and payment roles) but do not take part in the vote.

The project selection committee was made up as follows: the GSRA’s official ICT representative, project managers from the Regional Council’s ICT Mission, official representatives from the Regional Council's Territorial and Contractual Policies service (one representative, generally an elected representative per territory – pays, agglomeration or natural park) and an official representative from a department whose topic is dealt with in the application file (e.g. tourism, culture, geographical information, etc). Each participant received the application files in their domain in advance as well as a synthesis document (technical analysis accompanied by an opinion from the ICT Mission).

The contracting authority assistants for the two programmes also took part in this committee. The presence of consultants in this steering group occasionally created a conflict of interest position insofar as they could be prompted to ‘favour’ solutions by directing choices towards the solutions which they master to the detriment of alternative solutions. This question was raised by the consultants themselves and led to questions to the public supervisory bodies, which adopted the view that the advantages in this situation outweighed the disadvantages. No cases of abuse in the interventions by the contracting authority assistants were observed.

3.4. Innovative elements and novel approaches to implementation The innovative aspect of this programme comes from the dynamic created around the ICT projects: - as ICT is a new field where there are few lasting certainties (rapidly changing technologies, permanent development of uses and services, etc.), it is a good means of prompting all of the actors in a territory to debate on how to use ICT in reinforcing territorial development; the exchanges and debates transcend divisions (politicians/technicians, political leanings, socio-professional origins, etc.); - ICT ‘naturally’ leads to unusual ways of collaborating; it challenges ways of operating (e.g. the debate about the content and structure of a territorial web portal can be conducted with a much wider constituency of individuals, than the debate on the territory’s promotional brochure (classically edited by a small group of individuals).

3.5. Key implementation obstacles and problem-solving practices The project sponsors, which are often small structures, have tended to focus excessively on the projects themselves rather than fit these into a territorial strategy. As a result, it when implementation begins that more serious issues and problems arise and it is then necessary to compare progress in an iterative manner with the overall strategy to guide decisions about the project's development.

This question of strategic choices is faced clearly by some territories which did not know how to, were unable to or were unwilling to be more selective or prioritise their choices. It is easy to set a goal in terms of reducing ‘blank zones’ (deprived of broadband access), but it is much more complex to develop usage and services (some territories have posted six

4 Caisse des dépôts et consignations (CDC): this is a public financial institution, which is responsible for assignments of public interest entrusted to it by the State and the local authorities. In the current programme, CDC certified the accounts presented to it. See: http://www.caissedesdepots.fr/

7 priorities of which one is to support ICT for economic development purposes). The contracting authority assistants helped to place what was initially a mix of diverse projects into a wider perspective but, despite their universally recognised positive action, they were not always able to encourage greater selectivity.

Another difficulty is that the actors in the field are still adopting a ‘subsidy driven' approach rather than responding to the objectives of the call for applications. Despite the publication of a guide for applicants, which may have been too vague about the project selection criteria, it was sometimes difficult to avoid selecting a project that did not fully match the criteria but enjoyed strong political support.

Instead, the tactic adopted, and one of the key factors of success, was that projects were rarely absolutely rejected, so that they could be improved and brought to a satisfactory level of quality, alleviated this difficulty.

As the size of the projects for Alternative Local Loops (infrastructure) were small, the major telecommunication providers were not interested in bidding. As a result, some difficulties appeared due to the sub-critical size of the operations and the providers (it was impossible to complete one project due to the bankruptcy of the operator during the project). On the other hand, it is impossible with the public procurement procedures to bundle purchases of equipment or services by different procuring authorities to improve the negotiating capacities held by the ‘buyers’ who are often semi-public structures reporting to local authorities.

Another difficulty faced by Alternative Local Loops projects is the complexity of the legal and administrative regulations faced by project sponsors. These sponsors, which have very varied legal and administrative natures (a single municipality, a group of municipalities, not for profit associations, etc) do not always have the required competence in the technical field.

4. INNOVATION RESULTS

The innovative nature of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Digital Territories and Alternative Local Loops programme does not lie in the topics dealt with or the solutions selected to handle the topics themselves (for example, the projects covered e-tourism, geographical information systems (GIS) or e-culture projects for Digital Territories; or WIFI or power line communications5 for Digital Local Loops).

In contrast, the global approach towards developing digital systems at the level of a region with very different territories is original, at least in France. The Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Digital Territories and Alternative Local Loops programme validated the following practices:

- The use of pilot actions before launching a major programme: the Regional Innovative Action Programme was not isolated, as is too often the case, from the mainstream

5 Power line communication (PLC), also called power line carrier, mains communication, power line telecom (PLT), or power line networking (PLN), are terms describing several different systems for using electric power lines to carry information over the powerline.

8 policy programmes. In contrast, it acted as a field for experiments and for validating the call for applications method;

- a single contact point simplifying the relationship with project sponsors: the global subsidy devolved to the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Regional Council simplified the identification of the key actors in the system for potential project sponsors on the one hand; while shortening the decision-making time scales and reinforcing the consistency of choice on the other. The quality, trust-based partnership with the State, based on good interpersonal relationships, facilitated this decision-making and reassured project sponsors;

- an approach offering a global framework while allowing flexibility in design and implementation: i) the choice of a framework programme which provided the major orientations (top down) linked to calls for proposals (bottom up) allowed the emergence of projects suited to the territories’ needs and situation; ii) the possibility of working either on the development of usage and services (Digital territory) or on broadband Internet telecommunication infrastructure (Alternative Local Loops) separately or jointly offered the flexibility needed for the territorial projects;

- early involvement key intermediaries who were encourage to become involved very early in the procedure to clarify (CNASEA, the audit body) or facilitate the arrangement (‘pays’), accompanied by communication to all regional, departmental and territorial levels, contributed to the operation’s success;

- professional, independent support to improve projects (strategic reflection, priorities in choices, development of action plans, etc.): the possibility for project sponsors to draw on specialist external support (contracting authority assistant) planned from the project design phases, was of decisive importance.

5. SUSTAINABILITY AND TRANSFERABILITY

5.1. Sustainability Apart from some exceptions due to insufficiently targeted strategic choices, the projects launched in the Digital Territories area (usage and services) reflect real needs and they will find financing from the appropriate structures on an on-going basis. For example, geographical information system creation projects prompted the territories to recruit surveyors for permanent positions, which means that the service will last beyond the sizeable specific financing (80%) for the studies and start-up phase. The national objective to create full on-line procedures for municipal administrative acts by 2010 is a factor favouring the permanence of the services implemented.

The question of obsolescence may arise for the infrastructure based Alternative Local Loops projects). Two significant types of risks exist: i) ageing of the equipment, technological solutions, etc. which would impose replacement or at least updating expenses; ii) the development of the market strategy of major telecommunications providers, which can modify the economic niche models that were defined.

In three years’ time, the equipment for the various physical networks and the contracts concluded with the operators will indeed require renewal. However, within this time scale,

9 the replacement solutions will very probably be implemented by the major operators: e.g. deployment of Wimax6; the telephone network will also have evolved and the historical incumbent telecommunications providers which did not obtain the Wimax licence will equip the network nodes (sub-splitters) closer to low population density areas.

An observer may therefore wonder about the relevance of launching a programme of this type. The first is that it made it possible to gain at least three years on the arrival of alternative solutions for local information society applications. Secondly, it enabled the participants to develop a collective working method that is appreciated by all of the actors in the territory as well as to try out a method (use of calls for projects) which will last. Well after the end of the ERDF programme, at the end of 2007, project sponsors were able to submit applications which of course cannot benefit from ERDF funds but which will nonetheless receive financial support from the PACA Regional Council.

5.2. Transferability The method selected by the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Regional Council is based on the use of a large number of actors from territories ‘supervised’ by public or private intermediaries who support them at different stages of the projects.

The call for projects sent to actors from the territories was voluntarily organised to allow the greatest possible flexibility in the projects (type of sponsors, type of projects, type of implementation, etc). A large number of supplementary support measures allowed efficient project engineering: contracting authority assistants to help the sponsors to improve the quality of the proposals, the drawing up of a guide for candidates (10 pages); the involvement of CNASEA, the audit body, which took part in many meetings to explain the audit procedure and the eligibility for expenditure; the involvement of the Regional Council’s Technological Information and Communication Mission in all the territories, territorial facilitating structures acting to support project sponsors (the pays). Each project was promoted by an independent contracting authority which applied its own public procurement procedures, project schedule and auditing procedures, etc.

All of these practices can be transferred easily, at least in France. Moreover, several types of transfer have taken place since the launch of the programme: - the transfer of the programme itself outside the PACA region (some communes in the neighbouring Rhône-Alpes Region undertook identical projects and had difficulties in finding financing, insofar as the Rhône-Alpes Regional Council did not have adequate financial arrangements); - the transfer of the action to territories outside the zones covered by the ERDF; - a transfer to the other directorates of the PACA Regional Council where the framework programme method and calls for applications have become common practice (regional planning, urban planning and infrastructure, mountain development; agriculture, the environment and sustainable development, energy saving and renewable energies); - a more recent or on-going transfer of the method to other regions in France (Rhône- Alpes, Nord-Pas-de-Calais).

6 WiMAX, the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is a telecommunications technology aimed at providing wireless data over long distances in a variety of ways, from point-to-point links to full mobile cellular type access.

10 6. CONCLUSIONS: MAIN SUCCESS FACTORS

The success of the Digital Territories and Alternative Local Loops programme is based on a certain number of key factors.

- Political support, not only at the regional level or in terms of State services but also at the level of the territories and at each point in implementing the system; - Applying lesson from a pilot action (the Regional Innovative Action Programme); - The development of a framework programme concerning a transversal problem that allows the use of this problem to structure territorial development (top down approach) in parallel with facilitation and communication that lead the territories to express their needs (bottom up approach); - The publication of a call for proposals which was largely co-financed by the ERDF, the State and the Region (80% in the Objective 2 zones); - A team of specialist consultants who provided support for project engineering with the aim of bringing quality projects to the Selection Committee. Individuals interviewed systematically and spontaneously mentioned the positive role of these consultants. Proposals were only very rarely rejected (except at the end of a period for budgetary reasons or for reasons of a balance between the territories). They are analysed collectively and if they are not selected, they are advised on how they can be improved for future approval; - The existence of a small and dedicated steering group and a single intermediary for channelling ERDF funds (via a global subsidy), thus simplifying the steps and procedures and shortening payment time frames.

PROJECT CONTACT DETAILS

Contact person

Name: Elisabeth CHABOT Position: Project manager – ICT Mission, Department for Regional Innovation Economy and Higher Education Organisation: Regional Council of Provence - Alpes - Côte d’Azur

Address: Hôtel de Région-27, place J. Guesde 13481 Marseille Cedex 20 Telephone: +33-4 91 57 50 57 (extension: 67 47) Fax: +33-4 91 57 52 48 E-mail: [email protected]

Project’s website: http://www.regionpaca.fr/index.php?id=6136

The information contained in this case study is up to date as of: September 2007

This case study has been prepared by Pierre Bourgogne in the framework of a study carried out by Technopolis Group on behalf of the European Commission. The contents and views expressed in this case study are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the European Commission.

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