Innovation in the public sector has recently become subject of increased attention by policy administrators and decision-makers, but is still far from being uniformly recognised as either an organisational or societal phenomenon. Particularly within a local (municipal) and regional (NUTS2 or NUTS3) public sector context where innovation can have the most direct impact, policies and administrative procedures are not always predisposed or designed in a way to yield results that would be considered innovative. While in the private sector innovation has long been seen as a source of growth and...

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Last week the European Commission announced the results of this year’s Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS), a leading initiative within Europe’s growth strategy Europe 2020. According to them, after an impressive catch-up growth in the period 2006-2010, this year Bulgaria has registered the most dramatic drop in innovation performance in EU 27.
Additional information:
Innovation.bg
Eighth National Innovation Forum
National Innovative Enterprise of the Year Award
 

In February the third graders from the 26th school in Sofia, together with their daddies, mommies, grannies and siblings celebrated SID trying to figure out the key to the infinite possibilities of the Internet in a very competitive treasure hunt game. The event was organized by the pupils from the child panel of the Safer Internet Centre (SIC) coordinated by ARC Fund with the support of their teacher Silvia Petrova, the school counselor Genadiy Matveev and the school principal Elka Velkova, and it was led by the moderators of the child panel Luiza Shahbazyan and Antoaneta Kumanova from SIC...

Two resources, developed recently by the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre, won first and third award in the Insafe resource marketplace, which took place in Budapest between 26 and 28 September. The marketplace is now a traditional part of the training meetings of the network of European Safer Internet Centres. The audience voted for winners in three categories: Games and video clips, Websites and tools and Offline resources (brochures, leaflets and publications). The Bulgarian SIC was awarded first place in the section Offline resources for the interactive game “Flashboy trainer” and third...

On June 5, ARC Fund organized the first regional conference on prevention though interactive non-formal education in order to bring together in Sofia representatives of leading NGOs from the Balkan countries to share their expertise in non-formal learning, a very promising new development in the area of preventive services. It was attended by professionals from Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia including representatives of international organisations such as OAK Foundation and Save the Children. The conference was part of the project “Prevention of real...

On 29 February Enterprise Europe Network at ARC Fund is organizing Sectoral Meeting on ‘Mechatronics’ within the exhibition IFAM 2012, Inter Expo Center-Sofia. The meeting is jointly organized with the Bulgarian Cluster on Mechatronics and Automation and will provide information about services offered by the EEN network and opportunities for developing international activities through clustering of firms. The meeting will be attended by 10 companies from Srrbia, members of the Nish Cluster of Advanced Technologies. The meeting will be held in hall “Pirin” at Inter Expo...

On 19 October, the Bulgarian Safer Internet Centre (SIC), operated by the Applied Research and Communications Fund, presented best practices in public–private sector dialogue and partnership at the first South East European Regional Conference on Cybersecurity and Cybercrime. SIC expert Luiza Shahbazyan discussed main areas of partnership including collaborative actions undertaken to respond to reports received by the Bulgarian Safer Internet Hotline, a key national mechanism to fight illegal and harmful for children content and conduct online. The conference, which took place from 19th to...