Regional Action Plans In Sight

As OSIRIS is well into its second year, we are working our way towards the results we set out to achieve. As written in a previous post, the project partners have been introduced to - and impressed by - a number of good practices in the participating regions. As a background for these, we have conducted territorial context analyses in order to understand the specific features and challenges of each region. We have also involved and interacted with stakeholders representing various interest groups in the peer review process, and learned about different angles on the challenges they face.

These activities will continue through the coming winter, and some good practices have already been adapted to another region, but at the same time we have also embarked on the following stage of the project – analyzing these practices and how to share them, as well as developing the peer review methods through which we work with stakeholders and other interested parties to make sure that we manage to take up every important aspect of the situations.

According to the project plan, our aim is to develop policy recommendations and compile a catalogue of good practices, so as to assist both participating regions and other interested parties in their work towards more open and social policy development and implementation processes. We will, in short, present a number of creative solutions for regional development challenges that have already been tried and tested in one region, and point out which questions should be asked and problems solved if somebody wants to test one of these solutions for their own region. As a side effect, we will come up with quick and easy presentation formats for good practices, since these are important tools for the spreading.

The peer review process and the analysis of existing solutions is a critical task, because every region is unique, and because there may be pre-conditions – from climate to legislation – that require unique solutions for some specific region. Our solution for this is to compile all the questions and criteria that need to be taken into consideration – a check-list for regional development, if you will. This work will be a backbone in the regional action plans that the project is to deliver, and the results should be available by September, 2018.