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Project implemented with the support of the European Commission
2008 - 2009/2010
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This project supports local development organisations in strengthening their information systems. It provides guidance on data collection, analysis and use in policy making, customised to conditions in each participating area. It helps policy makers to build evidence on: What makes your local economy work? What drives it forward, what holds it back? Where and how policy should intervene? Is policy bringing results?
The objectives of the project are to:
1. Mentor localities in building robust information systems;
2. Establish a set of common indicators on critical local economic and employment development issues that participants and others may adopt and exchange;
3. Support the exchange of information and experiences among participating localities on improving information systems and learning from them.
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2009-2010 ACTION PLAN
The 2009-2010 phase of the project builds on the results achieved in 2008 and is organised in the following work streams:
1. Helping localities to construct robust information systems
This part of the project will review local information systems in partner localities, provide recommendations for improvement and distil good principles for constructing local information systems. This will be based on the analysis of information you collect or which is easily available from other (national or international) sources.
The work in 2008 helped to identify some initial core elements of robust information systems or ‘landscapes’. These are presented in four components of ‘information landscapes’ with aspects of good practice highlighted for each of them:
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The information ‘supply-chain’, which determines the information that is available to construct indicators, and to inform policy and strategy. Good information supply chains build data locally, are based on micro data that can be processed according to local information needs and use of national data primarily as a reference base.
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The ‘information governance’ which involves the factors that control and constrain what the local areas can do with information once it is collected. Good information governance statistically empowers local areas and provides policy-focused information, rather than simply generates funding driven information.
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‘Analysis / Value-Adding’ comprises the actions that take place to process information into intelligence and knowledge. Good analysis/value adding understands comparator areas and represents data limitations.
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The ‘Consumption’ component describes how the resulting knowledge is ‘consumed’ at all levels of the organisation and beyond by other actors. Good information consumption evaluates information in a critically constructive way.
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Outputs:
1. Recommendations to partner localities on how to strengthen their information systems
2. A manual for local policy makers on how to build information systems allowing to monitor local economic performance, identify policy need and measure policy impacts;
3. Compendium of local policies and instruments that work (for which sufficient impact assessment evidence exists).
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2. LEED indicators
This part of the project will address the need faced by many local policy makers to determine (in the vast amounts of national and local data and information) some core indicators that can help link data to local drivers of growth and link policy to drivers. The quality of indicators for local economic and employment development is inevitably the result of a trade-off between the components of statistical quality on the one hand, involving scale, relevance, accuracy, timeliness, coherence and consistency, and interpretability on the other. To these issues we also can add the consideration of cost-benefits (policy benefits weighed against investment costs and overall administrative burden) incurred in collecting data and developing indicators.
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Outputs:
Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) indicators: Work with partner localities will review the indicators in place and will aim to identify sets of indicators that can be used by local development organisations to better measure performance and policy impacts in the following fields:
1. Improving skills and human capital;
2. Reducing poverty and social exclusion;
3. Fostering entrepreneurship and SME development;
4. Supporting innovation.
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3. Working method
Project partners: The project will involve, in addition to the existing 10 Pilot and Observer localities, 4 new partners: local development organisations with a strong responsibility in strategy making or implementation (regional development agencies, sub-national authorities).
Activities: 4 thematic workshops will be organised hosted by partner localities. These 1.5 day workshops will:
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Review the information systems in the locality and provide recommendations on how to improve it.
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Identify the local policy instruments for which measured impact information is available to assess their success;
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Review the indicators in place to measure economic performance and policy impacts in 4 policy areas (Improving skills and human capital; Reducing poverty and social exclusion; Fostering entrepreneurship and SME development; Supporting innovation).
4. Requirements and benefits from participation
By participating in the FIELD project your organisation will benefit from:
Project partner localities will be required to:
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Provide support in organising a 1.5 day project workshop;
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Complete a project fiche (information on the data you collect and use in policy making and examples of successful projects for which measured impact information is available);
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Provide a financial contribution of 10,000€ to cover the costs of visiting, advising and reporting on the locality.
Download the description of the project
For further information and to participate in the project, please contact Jonathan.Potter@oecd.org or Ekaterina.Travkina@oecd.org
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