NOVAREGIO will foster trans-national policy learning and coordination of trans-national regional policy instruments for the stimulation of RTD investments in Central European regions and European Peripheral Regions by setting an “open method of co-ordination” between Central European (the “Central European Initiative” - CEI) countries and Peripheral and Insular Regions belonging to the “Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions of Europe” (CPMR) Countries.

The goal is to ensure more efficient use of Public Funds in supporting RTD investment, to enhance interaction between national policy design and regional implementation, thus to foster networking and provide guidance to policy makers in RTD matters.

The coordination of work within NOVAREGIO will be achieved by a combination of three work lines:

• Improved coordination and implementation: the constitution of a Virtual Regional centre “the Strategic Steering Committee”, a coordinating body that will mobilize governments, research communities and industry.
• Development of national and regional capabilities: a benchmarking exercise will be carried out to examine, summarize and evaluate RTD policy cases and to identify 10 benchmarks. Performance indicators and a careful description of the cases will foster easy transferability, replicability and mutual learning and dissemination to regional and national actors.
• RTD policy design culture awareness building: NOVAREGIO partners will promote the full dissemination of the knowledge achieved through CPMR and CEI networks, demonstrating the utility of the “open method of co-ordination” to policy makers, companies and RTD institutions, as well as to the general public.

The expected results of the project are:

• The development of an RTD Policy Coordination ACTION PLAN
• The development of a NOVAREGIO Virtual “Centre” which will function as a repository of knowledge and experience to ensure long-term sustainability, foster networking and providing guidance to policy makers in RTD matters.
• The identification of 25 RTD best practise policies taken from both networks
• The engineering of 11 selected Benchmarks demonstrating the applicability of innovative policy approaches and their added value to the development.
• The development of a BENCHMARKING Practice Manual.
• Provide scientific, technical and skills support by bringing together the specific competence and experience of the two different Networks, through the organisation of experience sharing workshops to enable a regional exchange of experience and best practices of technology policies and programmes.
• The organisation of  seminars finalised at mentoring regional administrative representatives in implementing successful RTD policies, through an analytical presentation of the key elements of the selected success stories.
• The promotion of personnel exchange between Regional administrations of the two Networks, with the aim to share regional level policy instruments for the stimulation of RTD investment.
• A special web site will be set up for the initiative, with a view to create a live knowledge-sharing process. A thematic on-line forum will be promoted to Policy Makers in both Networks.