COnnecting
Remote Areas with
digital infrastructure and services

About

Digital divide across rural areas of the North Sea region is limiting their attractiveness for families and businesses. This phenomenon represents a market failure, as infrastructural investment is not adequately delivered to rural areas due to high financial risks. Digital skills also fail to meet a certain level of progress. Local authorities are often not aware of their future-coming digital needs and end-users have limited skills to create an effective level of demand. CORA targets these issues and emphasizes on main components of digital divide, namely digital infrastructure, services and skills. It helps local authorities to identify their common challenges and empowers them to exchange experiences and test innovative solutions to create an advanced digital environment. 10 regions will demonstrate one or more dimensions of digitalization according to their baselines and local priorities.

What we do

CORA partners develop a model, which provides a comprehensive set of guiding measures towards digitalization in rural areas. CORA targets the rural digital divide as a shared concern in the North Sea Region. It helps local authorities in rural areas to identify their digital barriers and empowers them to test new tools and solutions facilitating the development of advanced digital infrastructure and services as well as enhancing the digital skills and competences. The aim is to bridge digital divide, improve public services delivery and create an environment stimulating digital innovation in rural areas. To do so, CORA partners are developing a model, which provides a comprehensive set of guiding measures towards digitalization in rural areas. The model employs fixed and mobile digital hub concepts to offer in-place advice, technology demonstration and incubator spaces. It is built on the “train the trainer – approach”, face-to-face and online training concepts. CORA partners will test if this model can enhance digital skills. The results will be utilized to formulate digital strategies for rural areas that will be streamlined to the regional, national and European authorities and influence the EU digital inclusion policy.