T:\Biser\Public Relations\paper_Brighton_final.doc 1 Benchmarking Regional Performance in the Information Society: Turning It into Practice Karsten GAREIS 1 and David OSIMO 2 1 empirica GmbH, Oxfordstr. 2, 53111 Bonn, Germany Tel.: +49 228 98530 0; Email: karsten.gareis@empirica.com 2 Regione Emilia-Romagna - Direzione Generale Organizzazione, Sistemi Informativi e Telematica, via A. Moro 18 I-40127 Bologna, Italy Tel.: +39 051 6397898; Email: dosimo@regione.emilia-romagna.it Paper presented at the Workshop “Measuring the information society: what, how, for whom and what?” in the context of the 5th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, 18 September 2004, Brighton 1 INTRODUCTION Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have opened up huge possibilities for regions to overcome traditional disadvantages deriving from remoteness and distance. Consequently, some authors have suggested the “death of distance” (Cairncross 1997) as one of the main outcomes of this technological progress. By means of the Internet and other computer networks, it should now be possible for even the most remote company to participate in the global economy, selling goods and, in particular, digital services to clients located hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away, all by the click of a mouse. Geographical closeness seems to have lost any relevance. But instead of making space more even, ICTs have shown to exacerbate disparities between regions, both inside and across countries. A lot of evidence (see e.g. Gillespie et al. 2001) suggests that regions differ not only according to the speed and intensity with which the local economy and the population adopt ICTs, but also according to whether they can make productive use of the possibilities opened up by the Internet and related technological innovations. Both are seen as major determinants of current prosperity and economic prospects for the future. As a consequence, regional investments in infrastructure and projects related to the Information Society have increased dramatically over the last years. A recent report (Technopolis et al. 2002) shows that “the Structural Funds can be expected to co-finance a total of just under €16 billion of information society investment in the period 2000-06. This represents an estimated 7.36% of total Structural Funds investment allocated to Information Society investment and suggests that national and regional decision makers are increasingly committed to information society development”. This calculation does not include programmes financed outside the Structural Funds: for example, the Emilia-Romagna region itself has recently launched a four year Information Society plan with a budget of €120 million, totally covered by own resources. Given these developments, it is obvious that not only need investments to be adequately monitored and evaluated, but policy-makers also need to be able to identify areas in which public investments and political support are most likely to be successful. They also need to have good insight into how the region’s economy as well as wider society are affected by ICTs and ICT-enabled developments, such as the trend towards globalisation. For this, policy-makers need high quality data on their region’s situation with regard to Information Society developments – also and in particular in comparison to other regions, which are by turns seen as competitors, (potential) strategic partners, shining examples