Twinning Bulgaria. Seminar on the Creation of a Website for Communicating Structural Funds

On 21st January 2009, Formez and Studiare Sviluppo experts under the Twinning project “Improvement of the Coordination, Management and Implementation Mechanisms of EU Structural Instruments”, held a training workshop on the creation of a website for communicating Structural Funds.
The objective of the Twinning project is the strengthening of the administrative and institutional structures at local, regional and national level to ensure the effective participation of Bulgaria in the European cohesion policy. The beneficiary of the project is the Bulgarian Ministry of Finance while the Italian Team leader is the Department for Economic Development.
The training activity was realized on request of the Head of Information and Publicity Actions, Boriana Goranova dealing with the Operational Programme “Competitiveness” of the Bulgarian Ministry of the Economy and Energy. The staff engaged in the implementation of the Information and Publicity Actions of the Operational Programme "Competitiveness" are currently editing the website and have required assistance to the Twinning experts under activity line 2.3 which implies capacity building of the Managing Authority of the Structural Funds in the implementation of information and publicity campaigns about the Operational Programmes. Furthermore, support for the identification of the technical specificities to be included in the call for proposal for assigning the website realization to external experts, was requested.
The first session of the workshop centred on the realization and updating of a website which must inform potential beneficiaries, the beneficiaries and the larger public about the opportunities offered by the Operational Programme. Particular attention was dedicated to how to write for the web, to the related monitoring and evaluation activities as well as to the examination of the technical specificities which are to be included in a call for proposal in order to assign the management of the service to external experts. The second session studied in depth the technical features of a website, with specific attention on accessibility and usability of websites. The seminar concluded with the assessment of the website which is currently online and which is dedicated to the 2007-2013 Operational Programme “Competitiveness”, so as to examine the possibilities of rapid improvement while in the meantime, a new version is under realization.
Guide-lines on the creation of websites on Structural Funds were produced by a Formez expert and the teaching material was disseminated to the participants in the seminar. The guide-lines contain an example of Italian call for proposal which aims at granting realization and updating of the website dedicated to the Operational Programme to an external company.