Iceland
DESERVE Iceland: Smart Communities Rural Service Initiative

Project Activities

The Smart Communities project in Iceland was financed outwith the NPP project and is currently nearning completion.

The Smart Communities are South 3 (3 municipalities in South Iceland) and Mobilize All (3 municipalities in North East Iceland).  They are both experiments in the use of IT to provide wider and better services in rural areas.

The main components in the South 3 Smart Community Programme are virtual squares: Smart Service Square; Smart Economy Square; Co-operation between Municipalities and Electronic Upbringing.  Mobilize All are electronic squares covering a range of sectors including health, finances, marketing, local governance and technical home base.

The overall aim of the Smart Communities programme is to establish and demonstrate the usefulness of ITC in improving access to rural services.  Icelandic representatives will be members of the International Steering Group and will attend site visit in partner countries.  In addition Iceland will host at least one International Site Visit and Steering Group meeting.  Sweden and Iceland will host further exchange visits between their projects.  The Icelandic partners bring a unique method of service delivery to the partnership and are also keen to learn from the other transnational partners mechanisms of delivery (for fuller project details please see below).

Expected Results

The aim of the DESERVE Iceland project is to monitor these projects and transfer knowledge to interested groups within Iceland as well as to transnational partners within the NPP programme.

Partners

The Icelandic Regional Institute

Project Details

The phrase Smart Communities has been translated to Icelandic as Rafrænt (meaning electronic or maybe digital) Samfélag (community).

Smart Communities is one of 22 individual projects in the Icelandic national plan for rural areas for the period of 2002-2005.  Its main purpose is to:

• Increase innovation and sustainability
• Increase the efficiency of local governance
• Improve education and make it more accessible
• Increase access to all kinds of cultural activity
• Improve health care and social assistance
• Improve social conditions
• Strengthen the democracy

Experimental communities with a weight in transferability of the projects implementation time is 3 years.

Smart Communities started with the goal to hurry the usefulness of information and telecommunication techniques in the rural areas.  It is a competition between municipalities, and the most progressive municipalities are gaining contribution from the state equal to their own, to practice their own ideas.

Municipalities were advised of the opportunity to participate in the project in November 2002, and detailed competition papers were distributed in January 2003 (pre-selection stage).  Many municipalities took part (some in co-operation with their neighbouring municipalities) in June 2003.  The Steering Committee selected four regions to continue development for the next four months with their project ideas.  At this stage they received a payment from the Smart Community programme to partly pay for the cost of their work to finish their project application.  In October 2003 the Steering Committee selected two regions as winners (Smart Communities) and signed formal (The Regional Institute)  agreements with them (municipalities).  The agreement included detailed information about particular projects, time schedules, financial matters (co-financing statements / plans on expenditures) etc.

The winners programmes / projects were named:

• 'The South 3' - Sunnan 3 (3 municipalities in South Iceland - Knowledge Communities in the Right Place)
• 'Mobilize All' (3 municipalities in North East Iceland)

Each programme includes many projects expected to fulfill the goals of the rural national plan, for example:

'The South 3'
Infrastructure
Smart Service Square
Information and announcements
Social service (applications / calculation of support etc)
Healthcare (ordering interview and counsel)
Energy (transportation and plans)
Schools and education
Smart Economy
Office Hotel
Tourism
Co-operation of the municipalities