Porto Digital: on the Way to the Knowledge Based Society

Porto Digital: on the way to the knowledge based society

SYNTHESIS

The Porto Digital project, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund, aimed to broaden the use of the Internet by the citizens of the city of Porto. It aspired to boost the quality in education, particularly through an increased use of information and communication technologies on all levels of education; reduce bureaucracy and increase efficiency of the city council services; decrease the number of information-deprived people particularly those with social problems; and contribute to a better quality of life in the urban area for inhabitants, workers and tourists.

To achieve this objective, Porto Digital implemented a number of complementary initiatives from January 2005 to June 2007, namely: − building a broadband network infrastructure based on 93 km of optical fibres and several aerials for wireless communication; − development of interactive websites on topics such as employment, culture, tourism, social support and real estate; − e-government activities, in particular online services of the city council; − establishment of free Internet access spots in public places; − lending computer equipment to a number of selected schools and social institutions during short periods on a rotating basis; − gathering and dissemination of information on employment, vocational training and tele-working in the city of Porto.

Porto Digital has four main promoters: Porto City Council, University of Porto, Portuguese Business Association, and the Porto Light Rail Company. These partners decided to create a non-profit association named Porto Digital Association to implement the project. Along with the four promoters, 33 other partners joined the project and are responsible for several activities within Porto Digital’s 10 sub-projects. These partners include higher educations institutions, vocational training companies, business associations, museums and other cultural institutions, information technology and multimedia companies, state agencies, research organisations, financial institutions, organisations supporting social inclusion and the regional development agency.

A number of results underline the importance of the project to the city. Broadband connection covers now about 55 sites including premises of local, regional and national administration, museums and cultural organisations, public library, the city park, primary schools, high schools, university faculties and the chamber of commerce. The broadband infrastructure has been built in such a way to guarantee a geographical coverage of most of the city. In 2008 and 2009, if funding is available, it is intended to connect an additional 213 sites (as of December 2007, only one third of the needed funding has been secured).

The Internet is now accessible by a wider public including young people, poorer communities, and people with physical or mental disabilities (provision of specific hardware and software). Moreover, a resource centre was created with the mission of providing and distributing to schools (in the framework of temporary working groups and special events) about 150 computers, 100 laptops, 100 interactive whiteboards, 15 video cameras, 45 digital cameras and 12,500 information technology magazines (one per student at the primary school level). In the first nine months of 2008 the resource centre is to support an initiative of the Porto City Council in order to place 100 interactive whiteboards in 50 primary schools together with additional help-desk and training services for about 500 teachers spread all over the city.

The project concentrated information on employment, vocational training, company creation, e-learning, tele-working as well as vocational guidance services in just one place - the “City of Jobs” building. As a result, the Porto City Council has new e-services such as online services to the citizens and e-procurement system as well as an Intranet for internal services of the city. A digital map containing the location and information about the most interesting cultural sites in Porto was to be operational in October 2007, but due to the interest of the other 13 city councils which, together with Porto City Council, form the Porto Metropolitan Area (1,575 Km2 and 1.6 million inhabitants), it has been rescheduled to mid 2008, so as to encompass information about all the 14 city councils. Moreover, an electronic prototype system was set up to perform real estate business in real time through the Internet, which is believed to be the first system of this kind in the world.

The Porto Digital project demonstrates that critical mass can be an important factor for the success of innovative regional projects. Gathering together an impressive number of partners and resources, the project managed to implement a high number of actions with a visible impact on the city and its citizens.

Background information

Country: Portugal Region: City of Porto Project title: Porto Digital

Key words: information society: ICT access, e-inclusion, services and applications for citizens; social issues: education and training, life long learning, employment and labour market, social inclusion and equal opportunities; tourism; urban areas

Duration of project: January 2005 – December 2007

Funding: Total budget €9,127,000 ERDF contribution €4,107,150 National budget €2,738,100 Private contribution €2,281,750

ERDF Objective: Objective 1

2 1. PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The overall objective of the Porto Digital project is to contribute to making the city of Porto an information- and knowledge-based society. To achieve this objective, Porto Digital gathers a number of complementing initiatives to be implemented during a period of 36 months. The main objectives of Porto Digital are: − to connect electronically the majority of the local administrations and schools; − to contribute to making local administration less bureaucratic and increasing its efficiency; − to promote the use of the Internet in various types of local communities; − to centralise all information related to jobs, vocational training, e-learning and telecommuting; − to make updated information available on the conditions of the city regarding traffic conditions, transportation, parking spaces, noise and pollution; − to promote the city of Porto as a leisure destination through a series of initiatives related to the cultural and tourism fields.

The activities of the project consist of developing and implementing 10 sub-projects organised within five main categories: − Infrastructure - building a broadband network infrastructure consisting of cable, optical fibres and WiFi, supporting the services provided by the city council, schools, and other public sites; - creating a Porto Digital portal and respective technological platform integrating all subprojects’ content and activities, thus creating a central point capable of providing the information generated by the different subprojects. − Promoting the use of the Internet - Porto de Reencontro (“Meeting Porto”): a set of actions to help the disadvantaged social groups to access the Internet and services provided by Porto Digital. − Improving virtual accessibility - establishment of 16 free Internet access spots in places where the public at large can easily access the Internet, such as leisure and study places. This also includes access to the Internet through WiFi and Bluetooth technologies in public places. − e-Government - e-Citizenship, i.e. activities to modernise Porto’s city council services, including an Extranet to interact with other public entities, an Intranet for the internal services of the city, electronic management of documents, and provision of information to the public by electronic means; - research to identify new services that can be offered online; - electronic procurement, through the creation of an electronic system to support procurement activities. − Sectoral subprojects: - the “City of Jobs” building (“Cidade das Profissões”) offering access to all the information on vocational training, employment, creation of companies, e-

3 learning and teleworking. It also includes individual vocational guidance sessions; - cultural and tourism digital map containing all the interesting cultural spots, (particularly museums), as well as information on the wine industry; - real estate e-market that intends to build up a prototype system for the purchase of real estate property (houses, flats, land) through electronic means in real time.

A range of key public institutions of Porto and the inhabitants of the city can be considered as the main beneficiaries of Porto Digital. The citizens of Porto will be able to take advantage of a number of outcomes of the project, such as the use of public services provided by the city council via the Internet, cost reduction for accessing the Internet, centralisation of information on employment, vocational training and entrepreneurship, as well as better traffic information. Also a number of institutions based in Porto are beneficiaries of the initiative. These include the City Council that will be endowed with new e-communication infrastructures allowing the provision of new services; universities, high schools and primary schools will be connected to the city broadband network; social institutions will receive IT equipment for free; and museums and other cultural institutions will benefit from the new cultural digital map and web-based virtual visits.

The following can be considered the main results of the Porto Digital project: - a broadband infrastructure with coverage of most of the city comprised of almost 93 km of optical fibres connecting local administration premises, universities, primary and secondary schools, research laboratories, museums, etc.; - one data centre (at the Porto City Council) that contains the servers which host the websites of the project; - a number of interactive sites available through the Internet (e.g. digital city services, employment, culture, tourism, real estate, business, etc.); - a number of information sites available though the Internet (e.g. counselling and social support, virtual visits with 3-D modulation, etc.); - IT equipment available for free during short periods on a rotating basis in a number of selected schools and non-profit institutions; - the “City of Jobs”, the key reference in the city of Porto in the employment, vocational training and teleworking fields.

The project is expected to have an impact on the following main fields: - Education – boost the quality of the infrastructure available to support the use of ICT technologies in all levels of education, from primary education through university; - Employment and vocational training – increase the competitiveness of the local human resources market and make it more attractive for national and foreign investment; - Public administration – increase the efficiency of the public administration services and bring them closer to the public at large. - Quality of life – increase the quality of life of the inhabitants living in the urban area, the workers of and visitors to the city of Porto.

4 2. POLITICAL AND STRATEGIC CONTEXT

In order to increase the quality of education, skills and knowledge of the population toward an information and knowledge society, and to keep in line with the Lisbon Strategy and the i2010 European Commission policy guidelines for the information society1, the Portuguese government created the Operational Programme for Information Society (POSI). The Programme was implemented between 2000 and 2006 under the responsibility of the Ministry for Science and Technology. POSI was funded by the ERDF, the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Portuguese state.

One of the nine priorities established by POSI was called Portugal Digital, which had as its main objectives: increasing the use of the Internet; improving the quality and efficiency of public services by supporting the modernisation of the public administration; increasing the competitiveness of industry through higher use of ICT; and promoting a digital culture.

Under the Portugal Digital banner, the government launched a €231m initiative called Digital Cities and Regions to support projects that promoted an information society at local and regional levels with the involvement of a wide range of regional and local organisations. Twenty-eight Portuguese cities and regions were funded by this initiative in order to develop e-communication infrastructures and e-content, launch vocational training actions, reinforce the modernisation of public administration, induce more and better e- government and e-business activities etc. Porto Digital was one of these projects.

Located in the northeast of Portugal, Porto has an area of 41.5 km2 (predominantly urban and industrialised) and approximately 265,000 inhabitants. It is the second largest Portuguese city, just after the capital Lisbon. Porto’s economy has traditionally been dominated by the commerce and, in particular, by the famous Porto Wine. The service sector has experienced a booming development in recent decades.

The industrial structure of the region is based on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The main industries include metal-mechanics, ceramics, furniture, textile, footwear and jewellery, among others. These industries have become more and more open to the integration of new technological development.

There were a number of reasons leading to the launch of Porto Digital. First, the city council had around 50 services scattered all over the city and the existing telecommunications infrastructure was too weak for online services and collaborative work. Second, schools had just a few computers and made little use of Internet connection. Third, the northern Portugal region (which includes the Porto sub-region) has the highest unemployment rate of the country. Although ICT is not the answer to this problem, it was seen a potential contributor to somewhat decrease this inequality. Finally, the tourist sector is quite underdeveloped if compared to other Portuguese regions, particularly in the central and southern parts of the country.

1 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eeurope/i2010/index_en.htm

5 3. IMPLEMENTATION

3.1. Project design and planning The Porto Digital project was initiated by four important organisations of the city of Porto: Porto City Council; University of Porto; AEP – Portuguese Business Association; and the Porto Light Rail Company (“Metro do Porto”).

In the preparatory phase the Porto Digital project partners had individual meetings with around 25 independent services of the local administration and all departments from the city council, four social institutions and several schools. The meetings had a goal to better define the objectives of the project. After selecting priority sub-projects more than 50 public and private organisations were invited to participate as partners in Porto Digital to carry out planned activities. A number of criteria were taken into account for the selection, such as: available skills, technical capacity, expertise, proximity to certain social groups, etc. A common aspect is that the partners had to contribute financially to the project which was 75% publicly financed. When the project started, 38 partners initially agreed to participate in Porto Digital, hence some of the invited institutions did not take part in the end.

The project design and planning phase was fully undertaken by technical staff of the four promoters of Porto Digital supported by private consultants.

The issue of sustainability was taken into account at the beginning of the design phase. Given the significant public investment to be made, the institutional promoters decided to establish a specific entity to look after this investment, the Porto Digital Association. The commercial exploitation of the broadband network was seen as the primary way of generating some revenue for the Association in the post-project phase.

3.2. Management, monitoring and evaluation system The project manager selected by the Porto Digital consortium had participated in the preparation of the proposal as a consultant and had a prior relevant experience in coordinating a similar project (Maia Digital, co-financed under the same national programme) in a town nearby Porto.

The project monitoring is undertaken by the management team and by the board of the Porto Digital Association. The board comprises representatives of each member institution of the Porto Digital Association. The City Council has two members, University of Porto – one member, Portuguese Business Association - one, and the Light Rail Company - also one member. In order to follow the implementation of the 10 sub-projects, the project manager has held regular meetings with partners responsible for each subproject. The meetings usually take place once a month. The sub-projects leaders are different institutions and include: the Porto City Council (four sub-projects), AEP – Portuguese Business Association (one), University of Porto (one), cultural institution Serralves Foundation (one), and multimedia company AEIOU (two). The Porto Digital Association itself is the leading partner of one sub-project.

Apart from the evaluation to be undertaken by the programme managing authority at the end of the project and the final assessment of the board, no other particular actions for evaluation are foreseen.

3.3. Governance: partnership and leadership Taking into consideration the high number of sub-projects to be implemented and in order to guarantee consistency and inter-operability between the project results, the four main promoters decided to create a specific entity, the Porto Digital Association. This non-profit association was responsible for coordination and assumed full responsibility for the Porto Digital project.

The main responsibilities of the association are to nominate the project manager, to set objectives for the short-, medium- and long-term as well as to define strategies and launch initiatives to secure the sustainability of the project after the end of public financing.

All in all, 38 partners participate in the Porto Digital project, that is the Porto Digital Association, its four founder institutions and 33 other organisations. Other participants include: public and private higher educations institutions, consulting companies, vocational training companies, business associations, museums and other cultural institutions, information technology and multimedia companies, local state agencies, research organisations, financial institutions, the regional development agency, organisations supporting social inclusion as well as the wine institute and wine trade associations, etc.

These partner organisations are responsible for specific tasks in the sub-projects. The Porto Digital Association signed an internal consortium agreement with every partner involved in the project. According to their technical capabilities, skills and experience, the partners play different roles in the implementation of the 10 sub-projects. A common aspect is that everybody had to contribute financially.

The project had a very strong political backing from the Porto City Council, which headed four sub-projects and supported the project management team in difficult decisions regarding changing time management or financial aspects. Furthermore, as some sub- projects were directly related to the implementation of new services at the city council, the top managers of the city made particular efforts towards the quick implementation of the subprojects (e.g. e-procurement).

The contribution of the Porto University was also very enthusiastic through the direct participation of its rector on the Porto Digital Association Board. The university is one of the institutions to benefit from the project as its premises, located in different sites of the city, will also be connected by the broadband network.

3.4. Innovative elements and novel approaches to implementation There are a number of innovative elements worth mentioning as regards the project implementation.

Commercialisation The commercial exploitation of the broadband network has been considered since the project outset. This infrastructure has potentially a high economic value as it is of interest to Internet service suppliers. The establishment of commercial agreements with Internet suppliers will cover the maintenance costs and generate income to the Porto Digital Association. For the time being, the exploitation of the network is not generating revenues as the entities that are using it receive the service for free.

7 Intellectual property A very innovative product was developed: the real estate e-system (still at a prototype stage), which will allow buying and selling real estate property through the Internet. This required innovative intellectual property mechanisms. The ownership of the system belongs to the Porto Digital Association.

Partners’ financial contribution Being financed 75% by public money, the project had to find the remaining 25% among their partners. Instead of asking the same level of contribution from all of them, the project management called for differentiated efforts according to the financial capacity and relevance of participation of the partners. Thus, some of them agreed in contributing more than 25% of their budget, while others gave a symbolic contribution of 1%.

3.5. Key implementation obstacles and problem-solving practices The structure of the national programme within which the project was financed, Portugal Digital, had a rather small team, which led to delays in the approval of intermediate reports and subsequently delays in the payments. Furthermore, the Portugal Digital national programme had no specific guidelines, which led to different interpretations about the procedures to be followed.

In order to alleviate these problems, the project manager tried to make sure that every reporting document sent to the project officer had no formal mistakes in order to be processed more quickly. For this purpose, he created a software programme based on Excel spreadsheets, which detected errors whenever any partner introduced wrong information (e.g. mistaken figures, lack of figures) in the spreadsheets. With this, the partners had to correct the information before submitting their part of the report to the project manager. The project officer was informed about this procedure and the way it worked. This led to a faster processing of all the reports submitted by the Porto Digital consortium to the national programme managing authority.

Late payments caused delays in the project implementation. For instance, the financial execution of the project was quite low at the beginning (in the first year less than 15%). In order to overcome this major difficulty the Porto Digital Association, with the agreement of its four founders, had to take bank loans to proceed.

4. INNOVATION RESULTS

Wide coverage of a broadband network infrastructure throughout the city While the Portugal Digital national programme was applied in 28 Portuguese cities and regions, only Porto Digital managed to build an infrastructure on such a scale. The network will allow the connection of the schools in the city at all levels, establishing e- communications between them for free. This infrastructure is to be commercially exploited in the future (planned to start in the first semester of 2008) through business agreements to be established with Internet service provider companies.

8 Real estate electronic system to be available on the Internet The real estate electronic system will allow the purchase of real estate property (houses, flats, land) in real time: this system, which implies the coordination of several public and private organisations (e.g. registry and land registry offices, other state services, deeds offices, real estate agencies, etc.), will be the first in the world when operational. It will offer a fast and safe service to the potential customers and will prevent tax evasion.

New e-services available at the city council The new services include general online services for the public (e.g. request of documents and payments), e-procurement system, and an Intranet for internal services of the city.

Working against social exclusion The project is helping disadvantaged social groups to access the Internet and services provided by Porto Digital, namely making computer equipment available for easy and free access to the Internet at institutions that support groups suffering from social exclusion. For the moment, seven institutions use the equipment provided by the project. This figure is expected to grow to 50 organisations by the end of the project, as more machines will be made available. There are also members of the project technical staff who are helping the beneficiaries. These technicians work also at the “City of Jobs”. As part of the Porto Digital Training Programme (budget of €0.5m) more facilitators are trained to promote the use of information and communication technologies.

The mobilisation of the city and of such a large number of actors toward the implementation of the project activities is also worth mentioning. This allowed the combination of a variety of human, physical and financial resources, which were fundamental to intervene in such a wide range of fields and achieve the ambitious goals of Porto Digital. Today, the Porto Digital Association is commonly considered in the city as an added-value entity for Porto. The Association has become a privileged forum where the main actors of the city (e.g. city council, university, and business association) meet and discuss the relevant themes of the community. The project has therefore created a strong momentum.

5. SUSTAINABILITY AND TRANSFERABILITY

5.1. Sustainability The project promoters decided in November 2007 to provide extra funding to Porto Digital for the year 2008 in order to guarantee the continuation of some activities. In particular, the promoters are planning the expansion of the broadband communications infrastructure to Porto's Metropolitan Area (14 city councils, about 1.6 million people), the creation of Porto's Metropolitan Area events portal, and the continuation of the City of Jobs. Contacts are also being made with the Portuguese government, so as to gather support for launching the world’s first Real Estate Electronic Market.

Moreover, some other elements should support the continuation of Porto Digital. The Association has no more than 10 full-time employees and relatively low operational costs. On the other hand, the broadband network infrastructure, which costs approximately €2.5m, holds great potential for the future. It can be economically optimised through commercial agreements with companies (Internet service providers).

The Business School of Porto prepared a sustainability plan for the Porto Digital Association, which concluded that the continuation of the association is economically viable. The infrastructure and equipments owned by the Porto Digital Association could commercially be exploited around services such as video surveillance systems (home and business), remote monitoring and control of buildings across the Internet, city traffic control, noise monitoring, air pollution monitoring, corporate TV, among others. Furthermore, the “City of Jobs” could be self-sustainable if it operates not at local but on a regional scale.

5.2. Transferability The internal management tools developed by the project management team to help partners undertake the right procedures regarding administrative and financial issues (i.e. project implementation manual and the spreadsheets for collecting financial information) are documents that could be of interest to projects co-funded by the Structural Funds (although the manual is written in Portuguese).

All the results that were identified as the most innovative ones could be transferred to other places, namely the broadband network infrastructure, the e-government services at the city council, social inclusion via free access to ICT technologies, and the real estate electronic system available on the Internet which will allow the purchase of real estate property. However, regarding the real estate e-system, it is important to note this system, which is still going through an experimental phase, could be an object of intellectual property protection.

6. CONCLUSIONS: MAIN SUCCESS FACTORS

Project critical mass Perhaps paradoxically, the project size and resources helped to make it a success rather than leading to complications in implementation: 38 partners, 10 sub-projects and a budget of more than €9m helped to concentrate the minds of all involved to ensuring success. Porto Digital is a big and well-financed project with a rather impressive amount of results, which have helped to make it a well-recognised initiative in the city.

Governance The fact that there was a very strong group of promoters composed of prominent and influential institutions in the city seems to be a very relevant aspect for the execution of a quite complex project (i.e. many activities and actors). The involvement of these strong entities in the Porto Digital Association, other than simply the city council, proved to be a wise strategy. The high-ranking representatives from the founder institutions that participate in the Porto Digital Association board are also significant asset.

Experienced project manager The information technology profile of the project manager as well as his previous experience in a similar project co-funded by the Portugal Digital programme, was decisive in overcoming several difficulties related to technical problems, payment delays, slow response from the programme managing authority, and the larger dimension of the project.

PROJECT CONTACT DETAILS

Name: Mr. Alexandre Sousa Position: Project Director

Organisation: Porto Digital Association

Address: Rua das Flores 152 P - 4050-263 Porto Telephone: +351 223 392 360 Fax: +351 223 392 369

Email: [email protected]

Further information: http://www.portodigital.pt

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

This case study has been prepared by Augusto Ferreira 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.