The coming months will be very busy for DESIRA partners and Living Labs. Several activities are on the table. While the Needs, Expectations and Impact (NEI) Analysis report is on its way, the DESIRA consortium is already working on its National Policy Analysis reports, and planning the Scenario Planning workshops.

For this reason, the consortium has come together during the month of May for two training sessions.

On 17 May, a session on Guidelines for Policy Auditions was organised. DESIRA partners are preparing the national policy analyses, which will be finalised by the end of 2021. The objectives of these policy auditions are:

  • to identify LLs’ needs for policies on digitalisation in rural areas;
  • to create linkages between the LLs and the national policies analysis, i.e. presenting the results of LLs to local policy-makers, and promoting policies that respond to their needs.

On the other hand, on 19 May, a session was held on the Scenario Planning, which DESIRA will implement over 2021 and early 2022. Each Living Lab will conduct a Scenario Planning workshop, with the objective of developing four scenario narratives by 2030. In addition, a number of Rural Digitalisation Forum members will be invited to participate in a European-Level scenario workshop that will carry out a foresight exercise. This activity is intended to cover a broad range of domains and issues related to digitalisation of agriculture, forestry and rural areas.

Both of these tasks are based on the outcomes of the Needs, Expectations and Impacts (NEI) Living Lab reports, which will be summarised in a new set of Practice Abstracts.