The Local and Regional Digital Indicators (LORDI)is a collaborative effort led by ESPON, the European Commission and the Committee of the Regions to develop a methodology and indicator framework to support policy makers, businesses and citizens to better understand digital transformation at local level. The performance measurement framework is developed and validated (still in progress) together with the citiesand key stakeholders and a number of experts at international level(to be listed).

LORDI has a pan-European perspective, inspired by the common values reflected in the myriad of policies, actions and initiatives surrounding the topics around digital transformation, with digital single market and digital cohesionand inclusion in mind. However, it tries to match this perspective with the operational needs and priorities of coming from the local levelas much as possible.

The LORDI performance measurement framework is developed mainly through desk research and stakeholder/expert consultations. It builds on existingindicatorframeworks and initiativesas much as possible. For example, much of theinspirationand many of the inputsare drawn from the ECDESI& Digital Cities Challenge, Eurocities’ CityKEYS and NESTA/EC EDSII.

LORDI adds value to the existing frameworks with larger geographic coverage, more specific focus, greater harmonization and comparability of its indicatorsand with a modular approach, which allows adding new indicators with ease. Takingthe EC/OECD/UN harmonized definition of a cityas a starting point for its geographical reference framework, it will cover 706 cities across the EUand EFTA, large and small alike.By developing two tiers of indicators–“KPI” and “contextindicators” -itenables to benchmark cities’ digital transformation against other cities whilegiving the options to filterthe results bya simple set of territorial socioeconomic context indicators (e.g. population size, economic structure, etc) and regional digital maturity indicators,in order to allow for more meaningful comparisons.