PROACTsme

The COVID19 pandemic has demonstrated the crucial importance of ensuring public service responsiveness to crisis to be able to accompany socioeconomic fallout. PROACTsme works towards this aim, placing the focus on smarter and digitised services for SMEs. Attention is specially put on the development and provision of personalised and proactive electronic public services, to reduce red tape for the business environment whilst anticipate policy and service needs, by this means building up a more resilient and competitive private sector in the different regions of the project.

Adopting data and analytics in business policy and intervention is of special importance in moving forward towards personalised and proactive service provision for businesses, yet not easy for the public sector. A transition to new technologies, new ways of working and a new, data-driven culture are among the main challenges. In this regard, PROACTsme will facilitate the exchange of experience, knowledge, and good practices in the use of data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) for: personalised and proactive services and reduced business-government interaction, building business intelligence and tracking SME policy and service needs in a changing environment, and creating a more conducive environment for business.

By facilitating knowledge exchange, it will help build capacity, and enable participating territories - Catalonia (Spain), Central Macedonia (Greece), Mazovia (Poland), Møre og Romsdal (Norway) and Lithuania - to learn from each other, tapping into technologies, methods and solutions that are developed and applied elsewhere. The application of identified practices on data governance will be further inspired by the advisory partner, the University of Limerick (Ireland).

In sum, PROACTsme will drive change on regional and national policy issues that can help accelerate progress on the ambitious path towards achieving the EU Digital Decade targets.