South East Europe jointly developed common advanced virtual accessibility solutions to support public services 

1. Background & problem to be addressed Cloud-based, virtualised IT platforms & infrastructures offer a strong potential to deliver cost-effective, scalable digital public services and to unlock regional growth and competitiveness. EC promotes a common EU Cloud Strategy as a means to help governments and citizens to access and develop advanced online services. The South East Europe (SEE) area suffers from great inadequacies in the provision of eGovernment services to citizens (G2C) and businesses (G2B). This cohesion gap sets economic and administrative barriers that hinder access of citizens and businesses to digital public services. As a result, regional development and competitiveness in SEE remains an unfulfilled potential requiring cross-border policy action. 2. SECOVIA main objectives SECOVIA promotes jointly developed, advanced IT solutions that harvest the benefits of cloud computing to support access to shared public IT services, resources & infrastructures and tackle the digital divide among SEE territories. 3. Main activities planned - Current status assessment on virtual accessibility services & infrastructures. - Experience exchange on shared, public IT services & infrastructures. - Assessment of SEE stakeholder needs and policies on shared, public IT services & infrastructures. - Feasibility analysis and roll-out plan for proposed transnational providers of shared cloud-based services, & infrastructures (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). - Improvement of public-private investment policies on virtual accessibility. - Consensus-based common policy positions on joint, cross-border cloud provision to serve the needs of SEE administrations. - Capitalisation of results through stakeholder networking and follow-up initiatives. 4. Main expected outputs - Comparative studies on SEE virtual accessibility policies, state of the art analysis on current funding mechanisms, best practice guide on virtual accessibility solutions. - Transnational experience-exchange workshops on virtual accessibility strategies. - Surveys of SEE stakeholder views on the potential of shared public IT services & infrastructures, state of the art analysis on cloud supply for the public sector, legal framework, organisational, financial & technical requirement analysis, roll-out plan for proposed inter-institutional IaaS/Paas/SaaS providers. - Stakeholder sustainability network, public consultation events on public-private partnerships, capacity building workshops, policy coordination meeting on shared public IT services & resources, common policy position papers on joint investments in inter-institutional IaaS/PaaS/SaaS providers for public administrations. 5. Expected results & impact -Common/ converging approaches among SEE administrations on shared IT resources & internet-based public services. -Joint operating entities providing cloud-based services & infrastructures for SEE administrations. - Improved public administration capabilities to support sustainable investment schemes for virtual accessibility. -Shared experience, common knowledge resources & cross fertilised practices on virtual accessibility in SEE. -Increased awareness on stakeholder needs of shared IT resources and internet-based services. -Triggering of follow up projects & capitalisation of results in SEE through established transnational partnerships & stakeholder networks. The results of the project shall be publicly accessible. 6. Consortium and territorial coverage The SECOVIA partnership consists of 13 partners representing 10 counties and approximately 65% of the total population of the SEE programme area. The SECOVIA consortium includes 3 regional governments, 3 territorial associations, 5 regional development agencies and 2 ICT institutions. It brings together advanced and converging territories to set up an enabling environment for experience exchange, sharing of IT resources and joint development of inter-institutional, cross-border virtual accessibility solutions.