Regional Competitiveness: In Search of a Framework for Greek Regions Strategic Planning and Measurement of Competitiveness.

(This paper is the result of a research program that was carried out by the Laboratory for Evaluation of Development Policies and Programs, University of Thessaly). Greek economy, after nominal converging with other western European countries and meeting the accession criteria to the European Monetary Union, sets as a new objective the attainment of “real†convergence. Success in this objective, while operating in a globalized economic environment and the single European market, will be judged on the choice of a development policy focused on competitiveness and regional development. This paper exactly aims at informing the strategic planning of a regional competitiveness policy. Especially, it intends to set specifications for a regional competitiveness strategy, to define actions at an institutional level for its implementation and to propose a quantification and measurement system of its results. Based on the definition of competitiveness and its determinant factors for each level (national, branch, enterprise, regional) and how they are intertwined, the necessity for a regional competitiveness strategy is validated by a critical analysis of Greek economy¢s recent related data and performance. The frame in which Greek regions¢ competitiveness problems will be addressed is analyzed under the light of the European Union¢s new regional development policies Furthermore, the article analyzes the competitiveness strategic planning of Greece and Greek regions in interventions of the current programming period. Namely, it evaluates the extent at which competitiveness is identified and specified in the Community Support Programme, the Competitiveness Operational Programme and the SWOT analyses of the Regional Operational Programmes. Moreover the policies that implement the European regional policy (CSP, OP) and the competitiveness policy (COP) are being evaluated on aspects that include fund allocation, strategy update, regional priorities, implementation progress, efficiency, performance, and synergies, as far as competitiveness and its determinant factors are concerned. Based on literature review, the paper assesses and analyzes the most renowned benchmark systems of countries¢ and regions¢ competitiveness. This paper results to a coherent set of proposals for regional competitiveness policy strategic planning. Particularly, it defines requests towards the aforementioned policy and identifies important issues for the forthcoming programming period. It proposes the establishment of regional agencies analogous to the National Competitiveness and Development Council, alternative organizational forms and a typical action plan. It defines an index set for Greek regions¢ competitiveness benchmarking, a synthesis and utilization methodology, and evaluates the documentation of available data.

Regions' Size and Regional Competitiveness in the 4th EU Programming Period, 2007-2013. Regional Units in Greece.

(This paper is the result of a research program that was carried out by the Laboratory for Evaluation of Development Policies and Programs, University of Thessaly, for the Greek Ministry of Economics and National Economy). Does size matter? Is regional competitiveness affected by the regions size? Are regional problems in Greece the same or differentiated among regions? Could an administrative reform create better development preconditions? The designation of the 13 Regions in the 80s in Greece basically stemmed from the need to create development units for programming and managing the development planning. Nonetheless, the designation of regions under the effect of historical factors and political expediency led to uneven area as well as population sizes. Moreover, up to today, Greece has put its major developmental effort in the infrastructures sector, while the new 4th programming period 2007-2013 imposes competitiveness objectives and an integration of the Lisbon Strategy in the Coherence policy that constitute an innovation for the Greek reality. Thus, the question occurs whether the Greek Regions are capable to formulate and implement corresponding strategies and programmes. This paper discusses the performance of the 13 Greek regions against other comparable EU regions and presents indexes reflecting the relative progress of the Greek regions, through critical review of statistical data concerning development level and regional competitiveness. At the same time the paper considers how a restructure of resources, competences, and geographical boundaries will enable: i. Concentration of managerial effort ii. Better control of programme implementation. iii. Better utilization of the limited available personnel . iv. More economical use of equipment and facilities. And finally programme operation monitoring at the regional level through the formation of larger and more powerful regional entities, vis-vis the central Administration. To this purpose administrative decentralization schemes of various EU Countries are reviewed. The paper proposes a restructuring as follows: All the competences concerning decision-making and management of the programming are concentrated to Regional Unions. The Regions retain only proposal functions, as centers of local bodies¢ consensus and local initiatives' mobilization. The paper also elaborates on a generalized administrative scheme for the Unions and the Regions. Summing up the discussion highlights the necessity to form larger and more powerful regional units in Greece, where one¢s strategic disadvantages will be compensated by the advantages of the other and through them many local economies altogether will build a scale capable to integrate their productive structure, to cause the emergence of new functions and to constitute their negotiatory advantage for FDI and activities attraction.

The First Step is the Hardest: Finding Connections in Media Literacy Education

Through a series of focus groups, this study explores how students, at the conclusion of a university-level media literacy course, see media’s necessary role in democratic society. It is a narrative inspired by the core belief of the media literacy discipline that if people are effectively taught the critical skills to access, evaluate, analyze, and produce media1 they will better understand media’s roles and responsibilities in civic life. Initial findings show that while media literacy may indeed enable for critical analysis skills, it carries the potential to breed cynical outcomes if not taught in a holistic manner

Civic Media Literacies

Civic life today is mediated. Communities small and large are now using connective platforms to share information, engage in local issues, facilitate vibrant debate, and advocate for social causes. In this timely book, Paul Mihailidisexplores the texture of daily engagement in civic life, and the resources—human, technological, and practical—that citizens employ when engaging in civic actions for positive social impact. In addition to examining the daily civic actions that are embedded in media and digital literacies and human connectedness, Mihailidis outlines a model for empowering young citizens to use media to meaningfully engage in daily life

Relational Approach to Knowledge Engineering for POMDP-based Assistance Systems as a Translation of a Psychological Model

Assistive systems for persons with cognitive disabilities (e.g. dementia) are difficult to build due to the wide range of different approaches people can take to accomplishing the same task, and the significant uncertainties that arise from both the unpredictability of client's behaviours and from noise in sensor readings. Partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) models have been used successfully as the reasoning engine behind such assistive systems for small multi-step tasks such as hand washing. POMDP models are a powerful, yet flexible framework for modelling assistance that can deal with uncertainty and utility. Unfortunately, POMDPs usually require a very labour intensive, manual procedure for their definition and construction. Our previous work has described a knowledge driven method for automatically generating POMDP activity recognition and context sensitive prompting systems for complex tasks. We call the resulting POMDP a SNAP (SyNdetic Assistance Process). The spreadsheet-like result of the analysis does not correspond to the POMDP model directly and the translation to a formal POMDP representation is required. To date, this translation had to be performed manually by a trained POMDP expert. In this paper, we formalise and automate this translation process using a probabilistic relational model (PRM) encoded in a relational database. We demonstrate the method by eliciting three assistance tasks from non-experts. We validate the resulting POMDP models using case-based simulations to show that they are reasonable for the domains. We also show a complete case study of a designer specifying one database, including an evaluation in a real-life experiment with a human actor