The Trans-regional Steering Committee of eminent members of the Regional Steering Committees strengthens the transnational dimension of the project and enhances the partner regions spanning methodology and its implementation on a higher level. It provides the necessary political backing and represents the legitimacy of the project.

Involvement of policy-makers and authorities will encourage inter-regional interaction and promote cooperation. Exchange of experience and transfer of good practise takes place. This will facilitate policy benchmarking and formulating policy recommendations put into concrete actions and successful measures.

The Trans-regional steering committee will meet at the end of every project stage (3 times). The general project manager is the liaison to report the conclusions from the Trans-Regional Project Management Committee.

The Trans-regional Project Management Committee consists of the general project manager and the regional project managers from all partner regions in the consortium. This is the main place where the creative and innovative work will be developed, discussed and agreed upon.

The Trans-regional Project Management Committee will focus on a creative and innovative methodology and analytical instrument. This is validated by all the partner regions. Design, development, run, rollout, implementation, analysis, conclusion and policy-building are based on individual but well-coordinated contributions and a general well-informed reflection within the consortium of the partner regions.

They monitor the analysis and implementation. They consolidate the conclusions as an outcome of the regional self-assessment tool and the inter-regional benchmarking instrument. Consensus is built on regional and inter-regional deployment: policy recommendations, establishment of the learning forum and organisation of dissemination activities to raise awareness of policy-makers and regional authorities to stimulate successful measures and good practise.

The Trans-regional Project Management Committee lays a foundation for the inter-regional deployment: inter-regional exchange of experience, cross-fertilization and mutual learning, transfer of successful policies and best practise and organisation of dissemination on a large transnational scale. They decide upon communication, coordination and control mechanisms and make them work in the project structure at transnational and regional level.

The role of the trans-regional and regional consultants and the degree of their support for well-selected project activities are defined. Norms, standards and guidelines for workpackage elaboration are defined. They approve the deliverables and results of every workpackage before releasing the next workpackage.

When milestones on control points arrive, they will take decisions on the alternatives and the approach to be followed. The Trans-regional Project Management Committee will meet at the end of every workpackage to give final approval to the results within the context of the pre-defined project objectives.

In order to exchange information on methodology, tools and findings an Inter-project Management Forum is established.

The general project manager from every selected project will communicate and exchange information to the Inter-project Management Forum, consisting of representatives from other selected projects. This forum for mutual exchange will preferably organise its meetings at five important moments in the project progress where critical milestones or major deliverables are occuring:

• a the end of phase 0, “Definition” stage, to exchange information on network setup, management structure, scope definition, consensus building mechanisms and dissemination plan,
• at the end of phase 1, “Methodology” stage, to compare the evaluation instruments and the indicator set which provides the base for the regional self-assessment tool and in particular for the inter-regional benchmarking instrument,
• at the end of phase 2, “Implementation and Analysis” stage, to take knowledge of regional conclusions in other selected projects, their recommendation strategy, approach for raising awareness of policy makers and plans for concrete actions and measures. In particular, the scope, subjects and approach of regional deployment will be the main issues.
• in the intermediate period of phase 3, “Conclusion and Policy Building” stage, to discuss the results of the inter-regional benchmarking and the underlying reasons for differences and diversity in performance,
• at the end of phase 3, “Conclusion and Policy Building” stage, to talk about the inter-regional deployment and instrument standardisation.

The project manager or his/her deputy will also participate in three accompanying events which will be organised by the IRE network secretariat in order to support the implementation of the pilot project line. In particular, these accompanying IRE-seminars will take place at the launch event and will be followed by three consecutive methodological seminars.

The Mutual Learning Platform (MLP) is a new initiative which has its roots in the action plan drawn up in response to the European Council’s decision that investment in European research and development (R&D) should be increased to 3% of GDP by 2010. Intended as a flagship of the Lisbon strategy, the MLP aims to enable all regions to benefit from increased investment in research and innovation.
The MLP will support European regions committed to full participation in the knowledge-based economy through further investment in research and innovation. The Platform will provide regional policy-makers and practitioners with the opportunity to learn with, and from, each other. MLP activity is expected to result in concrete tools for regional policy-makers involved in research and innovation activities.

The MLP is being developed under the leadership of the European Commission’s Enterprise and Industry DG with the participation of the Research, Regional Policy and Information Society DGs. The Board established to coordinate the Platform’s activities includes representatives from the Committee of the Regions, the IRE Steering Group, universities and regional institutes, and networks such as EURADA (Association of Regional Development Agencies), ERIK (European Regions Knowledge based Innovation Network) and CRPM (Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions of Europe).
The activities of the MLP will concentrate on three core topics: regional foresight, regional benchmarking, and regional profiles in research and innovation. Working groups will be set up, and will each organise two workshops presenting case studies for each topic, designed to generate concrete suggestions for regional policy-makers.

Overall consultancy support and assistance is provided at the level of the Trans-regional Project Management Committee. After a request for proposal process by the Co-ordinator MERIT was selected as most suitable to act as an independent expert relying on its external view to facilitate consensus building on conflicting objectives and conflicting priorities at transnational level.
The consultant is involved as technical expert for critical screening of the indicator set and providing feedback on the analytical instrument and the regional innovation scoreboard.

As experienced expert, he gives second opinion on the regional findings: contextual analysis (regional fiches), needs identification of firms (case studies), supply-side analysis (regional innovation support systems and infrastructures) and supplementary data collection as a result of desk research and field work. Assistance is given as practical expert for helping in the explanatory analysis for identification of underlying reasons for differences and diversity in regional performance as an outcome of the inter-regional benchmarking exercise.

Other partner regions rely on local consultancy assistance mainly for technical support or regional process consultancy.

The Transnational Project Management Board includes the project coordinator and assistant under supervision of the general project manager. Within this context, the general project manager undertakes the communication with the Commission (including all contractual and financial issues) for the whole partnership.

The project coordinator uses the software tool MS Project for project planning and control.
This tool allows to register the project plan and workpackage breakdown into detailed activities and tasks, structural relationship, milestones, timing, allocation of human resources and cost. It also allows the monitoring of the project status for progress control with respect to elapsed time, budget absorption, human resources utilization.

The Transnational Project Management Board will perform quality control using the QMS tool (Quality Management System), scope management, risk identification using the Risk Diagnostic Tool, conflict monitoring and issue handling. They provide logistics support to establish the necessary infrastructure and they take care of reporting, using the MS Office suite and communication within the Extranet that is established.

At the same time, they organise the Integrated Knowledge Management database (KM tool) for registering, filtering, categorisation, processing, storage, maintenance, consultation and distribution for transfer of know-how to all project members. On the average, one and a half day every two weeks is foreseen throughout the project for taking up the Project Management Board activities.