With regard to the Delors White Paper on employment, competitiveness and growth and bearing in mind the recommendations of the Bangemann Report, the Action Plan "Europe's Way to the Information Society", the First Annual Report of the Information Society Forum, the Green Paper "Living and Working in the Information Society”, the White Paper on “Education and Training”, the Interim Report of the High Level Expert Group, in addition to the deliberations of Member States, regions, and of the Committee of the Regions, 28 regions agreed to establish closer links in order to shape their ways to the Information Society at the regional level as a means to promote their economic and social development. These 28 founding regions recognised that regions have indeed much to gain through co-operation and collaboration in this field, especially because of the growing impacts of globalisation, increased competition and rapid technological development.
Thus, eRIS@ was created in 1998 to answer this need on the basis of the results and activities of the Inter-Regional Information Society Initiative (IRISI) and Regional Information Society Initiative (RISI) launched by the European Commission in 1995 and 1997 respectively. IRISI was an initiative set up by six European Regions (North-West England, Sachsen, Nord Pas-de-Calais, Valencia, Central Macedonia and Piemonte). Its purpose was to promote the development of the Information Society at the regional level. It has been seen as a pre-pilot initiative, which paved the path for RISI. RISI had been set up to provide support for 22 European regions which, during the period 1997-98, were seeking to develop frameworks and strategies for the development of the Information Society in their regions. This support took the form of a series of methodology workshops, primarily for the project managers of these regional initiatives and the process consultants whom they had engaged to assist them. Today, eris@ is composed of 45 regional members and 1 private company.
During opening speech there shall brief presentation of basic trends in eGovernment development in EU regions.
