caENTI objectives and main results (Jean-Jacques GIRARDOT)

European Union has introduced for several years project management and evaluation. Since Gothenburg in 2001, sustainable development has established principles of good governance: participation, global and well-balanced approach and partnership. Scientific instruments adapted to these principles are available for experts, but territorial actors rarely benefit from simple and cheap tools to draft, manage, observe and evaluate their projects. These instruments mobilise research that ensures quality, and territorial actors that experiment and valuate them. Consequently, caENTI associates research teams and actors to draft territorial intelligence tools for action.

caENTI is supported by the experience of ENTI, the European Network of Territorial Intelligence, gradually developped since 1989 through the Catalyse method diffusion in vulnerable territories that did not take advantage of industrial development and were hit by industrial recession. These territoritories were mainly in Central, Southern and Western Europe.

Diagram 1: Network of Catalyse observatories

The network's members are multi-sector territorial partnerships composed of public, private and NGO members. These partnerships were set up with the will to act together to improve vulnerable people's situation, as for example the « development partnerships » of the European programme of innovation and social cohesion Equal. They developed activities of individualised and community diagnosis, of local projects evaluation and of territorial observation, so as to design more relevant projects and to manage more efficiently their actions with the objective to improve economic, social, health, environmental and cultural well-being of people and of territorial community.

Catalyse method offers to these developement partnerships three tools to confront three kinds of information:

1. A multi-sector guide for diagnosis and evaluation that gathers individual data about people’s needs so as to define and measure needs profiles.
2. A services database (or repertory) listing existing services on the territory able to satisfy people’s and community groups’ needs. It provides data on services
3. A territorial indicators system (TiS) integrating territorial data provided by specialized statistical institutions.

Diagram 2: Catalyse method and tools (J.-J. Girardot, ThéMA)

The caENTI was a research action funded by the 6th framework program “Integrating and Strengthening for the European Research Area” of the European Union, in the thematic priority 7 “Citizens and governance in a Knowledge-based Society”. It was funded amounting to 900.000 euros by the General Direction of Research of the European Commission, from March, 1st 2006 to February, 28th 2009.

caENTI consortium gathers seven universities, a national research center, and seven territorial actors, which belong to seven European countries plus Taiwan. It is coordinated by the Université de Franche-Comté (UFC, France), where it is animated by the Institute of Humanities, Social and Environmental Sciences Claude Nicolas Ledoux (USR 3124 of the CNRS, UFC and UTBM) with the support of ThéMA laboratory, and managed by the Development Direction, with the support of the Europe service.

Diagram 3: caENTI consortium

caENTI activities fall under the prospect of the ambitious objectives the European Union gave to itself during the Lisbon summit in 2000: becoming the most competitive knowledge-based economy, able to have a sustainable growth while improving social cohesion. To do so, caENTI coordinates three activities of comparative research and two activities of dissemination.

The three research coordination activities include:

1. Designing tools for and with territorial actors and coordinating their achievements (tools for actors);
2. Making the inventory of scientific methods, research protocols and generic instruments for territorial information analysis used in the HSS laboratories and likely providing technological modules for action tools (fundamental methods)
3. The governance principles, standards and protocols for research and action ensuring these tools respect the sustainable development ethics (governance principles)

They are articulated according to the following diagram:

Diagram 4: Research activites coordination in the caENTI

“Tools for, with and by actors” corresponds to the caENTI final objective. Upstream, it is fed on the one hand by “fundamental methods” that give it technological solutions and on the other hand by the “governance principles” that evaluate the acceptability of these solutions by referring to sustainable development. caENTI also aims at making data sets useful for multidisciplinary research and territorial development.

The two dissemination activities are the international annual conference of territorial intelligence, and the portal http://www.territorial-intelligence.eu. The two previous conferences took place in Alba-Iulia (Romania) in September 2006 on the theme of regional development, and then in Huelva (Spain) in October 2007 about the relations between territorial intelligence and governance. The proceedings are published on the portal.

Diagram 5: The portal of territorial intelligence