Innovative e-Government Services Lowering Administrative Burdens for Rural Businesses
A new project called Rural Inclusion aiming to advance innovative services for regional enterprises has been launched.  More specifically, the project "Rural Inclusion: e-Government Lowering Administrative Burdens for Rural Businesses" is an initiative of the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP), which belongs to the overall Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) that aims to encourage the competitiveness of European enterprises. The project aspires to facilitate access, use, and offer of innovative services in the public administration field in rural areas.

Rural Inclusion mainly targets to redefine the way transactions between rural SMEs and public authorities are carried out today. Such a venture will be primarily based on the incorporation of cutting edge Web technologies (Semantic Web / Web2.0) in order to increase the efficiency and flexibility of the aforementioned transactions. In order to achieve such a challenging goal, a highly systematic approach will be carried out, that incorporates several actions such as the enhancement of the Web infrastructures of the authorities, the rigorous and reusable service process analysis and modeling, and the appropriate training of local agents in the effective exploitation of such a technology.

The semantic services that will be offered by Rural Inclusion platform and will facilitate administrative transactions between SME’s and local authorities, will be complemented by a number of other Web-based services; these will support the creation of communities of learning and practice in rural settings, thus facilitating the communication and exchange of knowledge and experience between the rural businesses themselves, as also with the regional public authorities.

About RURAL INCLUSION

RURAL INCLUSION project focuses on the offer of e-government services to regional enterprises in the scope of reducing/simplifying interaction with public organizations. It spans a period of 36 months, (June 2009-May 2012), and is financed by the European Commission Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP.)

For more information you can visit: www.rural-inclusion.eu

Rural Inclusiοn is funded under the Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme