By Olivia Ruel-Mailfert, APES, France

Today, the Covid 19 crisis invites us to build a more resilient, decentralised and localised society while promoting new progress and the good life in the territories. These open solutions, which can be replicated locally and managed by and for their users, are led by actors from the commons who rely on the organisational resources of the social and solidarity economy https://covid19-open.frama.io/memo/. They are compatible with the protection of the ownership and use of their users’ data and their governance models allow for the involvement of all the actors they impact (Read the memorandum of the Free and Open-Source actors).

Together, they represent a digital infrastructure of cooperation accessible to all and in all territories, conceived in a logic of solidarity and closely articulated with the missions of general interest of the communities. They are a long-term response to the collective resilience requirements posed by the current pandemic and weave a new vision of the relationship between the city and the digital world. These new commons embody a new vision of the intelligent territory providing services to citizens by enabling the development of new social links, new frameworks for exchange, new activities and new innovations for living together.

If the health crisis is to be an opportunity to question our current modes of operation, and while the question of relocating strategic activities is being raised in order to be in full control of them, the time has come to strengthen these poorly understood, poorly financed actors, who too often rely on the goodwill and free time of their leaders. This change of scale requires new actions.

The Plateformcoop Nord-Pas-de-Calais project (2022 – 2023) has two ambitions:

1. To ensure the sustainability of truly cooperative platforms (in the sense of the charter and a horizontal distribution of value):

  • existing platforms,
  • emerging platforms: new platforms that arrive to meet new needs.

2. To increase the “social, societal and environmental” relevance and efficiency of these platforms for users, territories and workers (through the networking effect).

The project brings together several partners in the region and at national level (Plateformes en commun, RTES, etc.).

The Plateformcoop project is made up of 3 axes:

1 – Support for the platforms;

2 – Support for local authorities;

3 – Dissemination of good practices.

At the end of the project, the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region will have the following resources

  • A network of cooperative platforms;
  • A solution for generating digital platforms for new cooperative platform projects;
  • A dozen or so local authorities acculturated and able to support the development of cooperative platforms in their territory;
  • A detailed understanding of the practices of cooperative platforms;
  • A support system to improve the practices of cooperative platforms.