The first prominent project in these new areas – E-Municipalities in South East Europe – was implemented during 2006 and 2007. The purpose was to facilitate ICT policy making and the implementation of local government initiatives in the SEE region through the development of a set of decisionsupport and benchmarking tools.

The project reviewed the implementation of case studies of ICT policy-planning and implementation cycles by SEE countries. Based on the findings from these comparative case studies, the ARC Fund developed pilot benchmarking tools for ICT policy-making and their implementation in SEE.

Another initiative to support science, technology and innovation in SEE was the Fourth International Conference Advancing Innovation in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (AIECA) 2009: Bridging Education, Research and Business Incubation for Fostering Academic Entrepreneurship and Innovation organised by the ARC Fund on September 23 to 27, 2009 in Gabrovo, Bulgaria. Representatives of the Bulgarian government, the municipality of Gabrovo, the World Bank InfoDev Programme, the ECAbit Network and the Bulgarian Academy of Science took part in the conference round tables, parallel sessions, networking and brokerage meetings.

Researchers, business managers and policy makers from Romania, Russia, Turkey, Belarus, Ukraine, Denmark, the FYR of Macedonia, etc. have participated in the conference sessions. During the conference various events took place, devoted to the Creativity and Innovation Days in Gabrovo and the 45th anniversary of the Technical University of Gabrovo, such as a presentation of Bulgaria’s services to the Enterprise Europe Network and visits to Bulgarian innovative companies situated in the region and exo-tourism business sites.