1. Agenda Setting

The goal of Agenda Setting phase is to determine relevant problems in the region. This covers a complete understanding about the reasons and influences for a certain problem. To gather this complete picture about a porblem, two major steps have to be considered.

1.1 Policy Problem identification

This means to identify policy issues. Policy issues can be divided into two categories: those already on the public policy agenda, and those that are not. If an issue is already on the public-policy agenda, it has a sufficiently high profile, and a formal process to elaborate further on it is likely to be in place. If an issue is not on the public-policy agenda electronic tools (among other channels) can be used to identify them quickly, namely:

1.2 Policy problem validation

In this stage it is checked, whether the problem identified is a real problem and should be taken further to an analysis stage. Objective Validation through experts means that the problem identified in the step subjective policy problem identification are checked again by experts, whether they are a real problem.

Subjective validation means that the problem identified in the step obje ctive policy problem identification are checked again by a subjective analysis whether they are a real problem for the
citizens and stakeholders.