An overview of regional territorial observatories – common elements and substantial differences. Territorial observatories and their role in shaping the defence capability and security of a region

In order to increase the quality of management at the supra-local (national and provincial) level, a special system - of constant monitoring, of evaluation of regional development processes, and of regional policy's effects in the form of territorial development observatories - was created. The system of the above-mentioned observatories is designed to improve the monitoring as well as to evaluate the public policies by creating a flexible system of acquisition and aggregation of data and by the elaboration of standards of replacing them. The aim of creating of observatories is also to increase the usefulness of evaluation by using the feedback obtained in the process of the permanent collection, compilation and sharing of the data which illustrate both the course of public intervention and the development of the socio-economic situation in the areas of the strategic state intervention. In this respect, this article constitutes an attempt to compare both the scope of tasks and the areas of activity of Regional Territorial Observatories ("RTO") functioning on the territory of Poland in different provinces. This is all the more important since at the moment there are no formally defined standards for both the collection and the processing of data in the above-mentioned Observatories.