Highlight of LL objectives and profile

Since its creation, Consorcio Fernando de los Ríos (CFR), has always been a strong promoter and participant of real-life scenarios for testing and co-designing services or products through its participation in several projects in the field of social innovation and user participation. The main motivations of Consorcio Fernando de los Ríos Living Lab, from now on Guadalinfo LL, to join ENoLL are the following:

– Getting support for implementing the next steps of our Guadalinfo LL

– To be recognised as  a Living Lab by ENoLL, the international community of experts in this matter

– Working at trans-European level

– Knowing best practices in the field of using methodologies, and transferring knowledge

– Extending the concept of Consorcio Fernando de los Rios: testing services and products, piloting new technologies and co-creating directly with the final users

– Spreading our network

– Giving visibility to our activities

CFR thinks that we can contribute to ENoLL providing and sharing our original story and experience and we are interested in actively participating in the “social innovation and social inclusion” and “regional, territorial and rural development of smart regions” thematic domain.

Description

The Guadalinfo LL was initially created with the objective of bringing digital literacy to the Andalusia region. But quickly, and thanks to the fast deployment and installation of the Guadalinfo rural and urban labs, Guadalinfo has realised the importance of working with and for the citizens. In order to do this, we have implemented specific methodologies to identify people needs. Since its evolution, Guadalinfo has been growing quickly and nowadays Guadalinfo LL is promoting sustainability and undertaking more initiatives.  Guadalinfo Living Lab is a perfect ecosystem for Living Labs and open innovation. Guadalinfo LL is composed by Rural Labs and Urban Labs (more than 840 in total – and more than one million users) where citizens are actively contributing. The only restriction for users is to be at least 4 years old.

Moreover, one of our key features is the large variety of users participating in the activities of Guadalinfo. In fact, Guadalinfo is used to work with children, teenagers, elderly people, people with disabilities, etc. Guadalinfo has been created in order to harmonize and give an official denomination to the existing activities as LL that were already taking place. Guadalinfo tries to offer efficient public services and a better use of the ICT (Future Internet) to  users, through piloting projects and testing products and services and to promote entrepreneurship in the different centres.

Guadalinfo has put in place a strategic plan including the following main areas of action:

– Citizen participation

– Integration and inclusion

– Entrepreneurship and employment

– Internationalisation of the rural and urban lab through adhesion to ENoLL

– Empowerment and motivation to change

– Childhood – Improving Andalusia´s image

– Social responsibility and sustainability

– Innovation and creativity

Guadalinfo has conceived a specific approach in the rural and urban labs in order to:

1) get to know their users and 2) implement initiatives, projects or pilot activities in a more effective way. This methodology uses a questionnaire to collect new users’  personal data and abilities (e.g. personal data, short curriculum, areas of interest and ICT competences). Once these questionnaires are filled in, the results are analyzed by the centre’s manager and users are classified in several categories, creating a “user repository” (age, competence in a specific domain, interest, etc.).

This categorisation allows the manager to direct users towards the most appropriate centre where relevant piloting actions or service testing is taking place.

Another important step is that Guadalinfo has established as an important parameter the training of the responsible manager of the rural and urban labs on the services/ product to be tested. Users are used to deal directly with the manager of the centres; this fact makes it easier service and product testing easier, working  in conjunction with the managers of the centres to improve comprehension and collaboration of the users who will be participating in the co-design of these services or products. Once the training stage is finished, the testing phase can start and the final step is the feedback of the experience that involves analysis of the results and communication of these results to the users (task assumed by the provider of the service or product to be tested, however CFRLL receives the final results in order to communicate them to the users).

There are two levels for generating projects in Guadalinfo: 1) ideas coming from users 2) ideas and projects coming from outside (stakeholders, providers, and network of LL).

References and Track Record

Guadalinfo and its environment: The Network interweaving in its areas of action and influence.

– Users of the Social Network Guadalinfo have 5% greater chances to find a job.

– Their skills in using web 2.0 are 17% higher than those of the general population

– Uploading and sharing first-party content into the Net increase 13%.

Guadalinfo favours:

– Integration of ICTs in the daily life of users.

– Increasing levels of education and relation between citizens and Public Administrations.

– Increased motivation to develop business projects committed to the territory.

Guadalinfo’s contribution to Andalusia:

– An increase of Andalusian Gross Value Added amounting 24.2 million Euros, which represents 6.68% of total regional increase between 2007 and 2010.

– Creation of 1,500 jobs, directly and indirectly.

– A strong impact on social competence through its formative activities. Each 1% increase in the endowment of human capital per capita for training translates into a 2.3% increase in GDP per capita in the region.

– Internet access in the municipalities under 10,000 inhabitants (18.46%) grew above the Andalusian average (16.7%). This, together with the increasing number of households with internet access in Andalusia (5% in 2009, up from 10% last year), indicates that Guadalinfo centres are fulfilling a straightforward function promoting equal opportunities and resources.

Guadalinfo in figures

– Nearly 800 Guadalinfo Living Labs in Andalusia (Centres with Public Access to the Internet: CAPIs), 65 of them in disadvantaged and urban areas (over 20,000 inhabitants).

– More than 1000 social innovation projects underway.

– 163 Telecentres Associated.

– 25 access points to Andalusian Communities Abroad (CAEs).

– More than 780 facilitators and team builders responsible for promoting the Knowledge Society  in Andalusia.

– More than one million users who make Guadalinfo the largest virtual city in Andalusia.

– 293.280 activities with the participation of users in the centres.

– More than 738.900 users registered in www.guadalinfo.es.

– 900.389 pages viewed in the portal each month.

– At least 6’43” average connection time by active users

– Monthly average 2.141 visits to the Guadalinfo blog.

– 88.000 mentions in social media

– More than 264.000 video results on google ( 32.000 on Youtube).

– 1.173 virtual communities.

1. Our Social Network

– Nearly 1,000 telecentres throughout Andalusia (public centres for internet access, for technology training and social innovation)

– 25 Andalusian communities’ centres abroad.

– A network consisting of 800 efacilitators.

– 10,000 high-performance computers, broadband and more than 160,000 activities.

– 770 municipalities involved.

– More than 3,500 public and private entities connected.

– More than one million Andalusian citizens participating in the network.

2. Spanish Network of Telecentres ( http://www.comunidaddetelecentros.net/ )

– The Consortium Fernando de los Rios (Guadalinfo’s manager) chairs the Spanish Network of Telecentres Communities.

– 6,000 Telecentres all over Spain.

– 3.5 million users all over the State.

3. All-Digital active member (former Telecentre Europe)

– 22 country networks in the European Union.

– 30,000 Telecentres.

– 21 million EU citizens participate in Telecentre Europe.