There were four separate DAE events for the Swedish part:

1) A meeting with the Swedish government ministries involved in the Digital agenda implementation. The topics covered were the new Commission proposals on Horizon 2020, the Connecting Europe Facility proposal and also E-government including IPv6.

2) A conference in Stockholm presenting the DAE in general and more specifically the Connecting Europe Facility proposal, Horizon 2020 and the specific issues on egovernment and e-inclusion identified for Sweden with over 50 participants, half of which were women. The discussion was very active and constructive and the questions/comments related mainly to: education in IT and how important this particular bottom-up activity was for including notably the elderly in the digital society. Several examples such as Digidel.net and Seniornet were also presented on this subject. These projects and network have as objectives to bring people onto the internet eg Digidel which aims at getting 500.000 people that have previously not used the internet onto the digital single market. Other comments and questions related to the role of the local libraries in making the digital world understandable to the citizens or the security aspects of cloud computing. It was also mentioned that the recently launched Swedish national Digital Agenda will be followed by local or regional digital agendas.

3) The “Really local” event was co-organised in Örebro with the county governor and was focused on the issues surrounding the activities in the local digital agenda established by the region, as well as the challenges for the local broadband investment. The so called Örebro model for broadband investment was presented, which implied a cooperative approach between local groups or individuals, the commune/region and the telecom operator. The model is built on a bottom-up approach, meaning that the financial support system will only be established when there is sufficient number of clients actually committed to subscription of the high speed broadband services (FTTH). The minimum commitment is 50% of households subscribing. The costs per household connection is estimated at 3.500 EUR, of which the public sector grant represents approximately 1500 EUR. Several interesting EU funded projects were also presented, such as ExCITE, which tests robots (called GIRAF from the former FP7 project) in the elderly people’s homes, as well as Tolkservice, a public service for sign language over mobile phones and the internet eg to help hearing impaired to order goods or services over the phone or when changing a doctor’s appointments. Interestingly, some of the solutions presented are also exported to Chinese organisations ie this local organisation is exporting its services to China. The comments and questions mainly surrounded the above items. A final presentation was made by a local media representative (for Nerikes Allehanda) who estimated that the traditional media has turned a corner and that big opportunities were ahead of them ie that the new business models are starting to bear fruit and become more profitable.


4) Karlstad The second "Really Local" was co-organised with the Region of Värmland. The Region and the County Governor are together with EU funded projects exploring how to improve the situation in their sparsely populated region. The discussion was focused on broadband deployment and how it can be done as soon as possible. The interest for CEF and the possible support from the Government (Ministry of Industry), represented by the Director Lena Hägglöf, was therefore of importance for the participants. One interesting example from the local community of Saffle was presented. With a budget from the Regional Funds, 1/3 of the cost (2M€), they have been able to mobilise the whole commune to support a project with voluntary contribution. Farmers have contributed with preparatory work on canalisation of fibre and all connected households have made financial contributions with around 2000€. 92% of the inhabitants in this rule area are now connected to the 100 Mb fibre network and this network is maintained by an economic collaboration between the users. This triggered a very intensive discussion on how this has been possible and a need to use this example as a model for the whole region, which in itself is similar to the size of Belgium.