The Digital Cities team met up for the third time in the city of Jesenik, Czech Republic. The meeting combined a two-day knowledge sharing workshop and time for the project team to review their current progress. The focus of the workshop was e-health and e-democracy, with partners from Almere Kennisstad (Netherlands) and e-Trikala (Greece) demonstrating examples of best practice from the cities.
With a cross-section of the local citizens represented in the audience, the workshops were an ideal opportunity for the Digital Cities team to test their best practice models for citizen engagement and improved health care in a new environment. The initiatives gave us an idea about how the integration of ICT in everyday-life can help create greater levels of efficiency, though improved communications and opportunities for dialogue between local authorities and its public. They also raised awareness of the challenges local authorities face when trying to launch programmes such as e-diagolos to a curious public, i.e. how establishing a cost effective model with a sustainable number of users can take up to a year to achieve.
“The workshops were a great opportunity to hear from colleagues across Europe and learn more from their experiences. OK not all the ideas were going to work for us, but we can definitely build on the knowledge and best practice being shared in these sessions. The next challenge is identifying ways of taking this forward in the context of the Jesenik region.” Radek Sedlacek, Project Manager -Municipality of Jesenik
The workshop created a forum for some of Jesenik’s younger generation to share their views and opinions on the benefits of digital in their city. For the facilitators of the workshops, the opportunity to support lively discussions between citizens and local authority representatives was great for stimulating thinking and formulating possible steps for the future. As Tamer El-Masri, from Almere Kennisstad commented, “The workshops were first class, vibrant and informative with some amazingly passionate people. It was especially good to see that so many students getting involved with the future of their city. After all, the future lies in their hands!”
The outcomes of this workshop have been summarised in a short report, which takes into account some of the key learning from the best practices and recommends possible ways to take these forward for the Jesenik region. The report will be shared across the Digital Cities project team and will go on to inform the content for the DC Model.
