  We show that it is possible to describe the effective Pomeron intercept,
determined from the HERA Deep Inelastic Scattering data at small values of
Bjorken x, using next-to-leading order BFKL evolution together with collinear
improvements. To obtain a good description over the whole range of Q^2 we use a
non-Abelian physical renormalization scheme with BLM optimal scale, combined
with a parametrization of the running coupling in the infrared region.
