Reinforcing social, economic and territorial cohesion, by making ICT products and services more accessible within less-developed regions, becomes an economic, social, ethical and political imperative, according to the Lisbon agenda. It is consequently crucial that successful policy practices, recognized by the European Commission as “best practices” are transferred from the regions that have already successfully implemented them to regions that are just now designing policy measures for improvement of SME competitiveness through better access to the knowledge economy. In this context,the EVITA consortium includes 3 types of players: a. ""donor"" partners who have implemented “best-practice” policy initiatives for the adoption of IT and e-business practices b. ""beneficiary"" partners representing “Objective 1” regions who are lagging behind in terms e-business penetration and who are about to design relevant regional policies in the framework of the 2007-2013 funding periodc. partners with expertise in e-learning, IT training, SME competitiveness and regional development plans and who can act as catalysts for the successful transfer of the good practices.EVITA builds upon various good practices developed under different regional or interregional development programs, (namely, the “2Bdigital” program in Catalunya, the GOONLINE initiative in Greece, the ELISA project in the Balkan area, the “From Insight to Action program in Sweden, the “Echangeurs” program in Marseille Provence, the “e-commerce leveraging Center” in Galicia) and attempts to improve the effectiveness of relevant regional policies in Lithuania, Pomurska (Slovenia), Southern Aegean (Greece), Galicia (Spain) and Latvia. In addition to the exchange of know-how, EVITA proposes the pilot implementation of these practices, together with the development of new approaches, such as the integration of e-learning techniques and methodologies for reaching SMEs in remote areas.The main activities envisaged are - Study Visits for the presentation of the “best policy initiatives” to all partners- Policy Maker Workshops for the transfer of “best policy initiatives” to local Policy Makers - A “best practice policy measures"" guide - 5 regional “IT training strategy"" reports- a multilingual e-learning platform enriched with multimedia “e-business training content”- a seminar for the creation of “e-tutors” task forces- a study on the impact of e-learning on the local SMEs competitiveness- 9 local dissemination events to promote the project’s results. - One Final Conference for EU wide dissemination to Policy MakersThe expected results of the project in the targeted areas are the improvement of relevant regional policies, the improvement of e-skills and the increase in IT use and e-business practices adoption by SMEs. In the long term, EVITA aims at sustained impacts on innovation, competitiveness and economic growth in the targeted regions. Achievements: The main aim of EVITA is to transfer recognized good practices in order to improve the effectiveness of regional development policies in the area of the access of SMEs to knowledge, e-business practices and the globalized digital economy in regions with low IT penetration. In this framework, during those first 15 months of the project, emphasis was given to the Study Visits for the analysis of relevant policy initiatives. In Athens, Barcelona, Marseille, Santiago and Stockholm, the donor partners GRNET, COPCA, CCIMP, CESGA and TILLVAXVERKET have presented in details the methodologies of policy initiatives such as “e-business forum”, “Goonline”, “2BDigital”, “Echangeurs”, “The e-commerce leveraging center”, “From insight to action”, "REG IT" etc. In Athens (GRNET), the attendees focused on decoding the methodologies of “e-business forum”; a consultation mechanism for open, broad and continuous dialogue of the State with the main stakeholders from business and academia, that are connected to e-business, and “Goonline”, an initiative through which, 50.000 SMEs have been trained on the use and the potential benefits of the business use of internet. In Barcelona (COPCA), the initiative “studied” was “2BDigital”, through which, the Government aims to support the development of a digital marketing plan in order to optimize the performance on the digital markets by the local SMEs, to provide guidance for increasing the number of potential customers via the web 2.0, to improve Search Engine “Findability” and to find new business opportunities. In Marseille and Paris (CCIMP), the emphasis was given to the “Echangeurs” government initiative, through which, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry aims to develop businesses, industries and networks’ competitiveness, thanks to new technologies, to promote the network of new technologies’ actors and to help SMEs to ask themselves the good questions and find the right answers about IT use . In Santiago (CESGA), the center of activities of the partners were focused on the Galicia e-Commerce Leveraging Centre who’s the aim is to promote and support the galician SMEs to take advantage of new technologies and Internet and start e-commerce processes. In Stockholm (TILLVAXVERKET), the whole package of the governmental measures for SME support on ICT and e-business was presented and discussed, with a lot of emphasis given upon the “From Insight to Action” program, which aims to help SMEs to use secure e-business solutions. This program is coordinated by Tillvaxtverket and the 50 ongoing projects are sub financed by Tillvaxtverket. The project owners/project managers are SME networks or governmental organizations such as municipalities. The partners were deeply interested in this model. Moreover, main expected outcomes of EVITA are the e-learning platform and the training content on e-business for SMEs. In both subjects the work has progressed significantly. The training content in English was delivered by COPCA after close cooperation with GRNET and the e-learning platform specs were produced and the system is ready for use by FTZ. At the same time, in order to best communicate the results of the projects between partners and to the larger public, the project logo, the web portal (www.evita-interreg4c.eu) and the project leaflets have been created and a newsletter is regularly dispatched. Additionally, the Study on “e-learning and SMEs Competitiveness” is at a final stage. The implementation is now 2-3 months behind the time schedule as a lot of administrative issues have occurred for at least 5 partners (GRNET, FTZ, CCIMP, SAITC, SAR).