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National initiative
A National initiative is a concept taken from the UNESCO "Virtual Universities" classification scheme.
It refers to an initiative taken by a ministry or national agency in a country to set up a programme focussed on e-learning in university-level institutions.
Note that "national" may refer to an autonomous or semi-autonomous part of a country, e.g. Scotland or Catalonia - or even to one of the states or provinces in federal countries such as Australia, Canada, China, India or the US.
If the initiative involves more than one country but not many then it is not classified as a national iniatiative but as a multinational initiative.
If the initiative involves a supranational political grouping or range of countries in a region than it is called an international initiative.
Very often the national initiative will set up a consortium or generate a newly created institution of a unique nature in the nation involved. This leads to some overlap of the UNESCO classifications.
National initiatives
There is an automatically maintained list of these at Category:National initiatives. This has currently (August 2009) around 50 entries but is still growing slightly.