Porto Digital: on the way to the knowledge based society City of ...

3. IMPLEMENTATION
3.1. Project design and planning
The <strong>Porto</strong> <strong>Digital</strong> project was initiated by four important organisations of the city of <strong>Porto</strong>:
<strong>Porto</strong> City Council; University of <strong>Porto</strong>; AEP – Portuguese Business Association; and the
<strong>Porto</strong> Light Rail Company (“Metro do <strong>Porto</strong>”).
In the preparatory phase the <strong>Porto</strong> <strong>Digital</strong> project partners had individual meetings with
around 25 independent services of the local administration and all departments from the
city council, four social institutions and several schools. The meetings had a goal to better
define the objectives of the project. After selecting priority sub-projects more than 50
public and private organisations were invited to participate as partners in <strong>Porto</strong> <strong>Digital</strong> to
carry out planned activities. A number of criteria were taken into account for the selection,
such as: available skills, technical capacity, expertise, proximity to certain social groups,
etc. A common aspect is that the partners had to contribute financially to the project which
was 75% publicly financed. When the project started, 38 partners initially agreed to
participate in <strong>Porto</strong> <strong>Digital</strong>, hence some of the invited institutions did not take part in the
end.
The project design and planning phase was fully undertaken by technical staff of the four
promoters of <strong>Porto</strong> <strong>Digital</strong> supported by private consultants.
The issue of sustainability was taken into account at the beginning of the design phase.
Given the significant public investment to be made, the institutional promoters decided to
establish a specific entity to look after this investment, the <strong>Porto</strong> <strong>Digital</strong> Association. The
commercial exploitation of the broadband network was seen as the primary way of
generating some revenue for the Association in the post-project phase.
3.2. Management, monitoring and evaluation system
The project manager selected by the <strong>Porto</strong> <strong>Digital</strong> consortium had participated in the
preparation of the proposal as a consultant and had a prior relevant experience in
coordinating a similar project (Maia <strong>Digital</strong>, co-financed under the same national
programme) in a town nearby <strong>Porto</strong>.
The project monitoring is undertaken by the management team and by the board of the
<strong>Porto</strong> <strong>Digital</strong> Association. The board comprises representatives of each member institution
of the <strong>Porto</strong> <strong>Digital</strong> Association. The City Council has two members, University of <strong>Porto</strong> –
one member, Portuguese Business Association - one, and the Light Rail Company - also
one member. In order to follow the implementation of the 10 sub-projects, the project
manager has held regular meetings with partners responsible for each subproject. The
meetings usually take place once a month. The sub-projects leaders are different
institutions and include: the <strong>Porto</strong> City Council (four sub-projects), AEP – Portuguese
Business Association (one), University of <strong>Porto</strong> (one), cultural institution Serralves
Foundation (one), and multimedia company AEIOU (two). The <strong>Porto</strong> <strong>Digital</strong> Association
itself is the leading partner of one sub-project.
Apart from the evaluation to be undertaken by the programme managing authority at the
end of the project and the final assessment of the board, no other particular actions for
evaluation are foreseen.
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