The project consortium have been working together to develop a greater level of understanding of these challenges, by building on the lessons learnt from recent visits to best practices examples across Europe. Additionally, a series of workshops and supporting training sessions continue to develop the understanding and knowledge required to successfully transfer the best practices to a local situation.

Based on the idea of redesigning Plato’s Republic, eDialogos comprises an innovative and fully-fledged online eDemocracy platform, allowing the citizens of the City of Trikala to participate in the public decision-making processes. Within a specific timeframe, different e-tools have been developed to allow for citizen feedback: an ePoll for agenda setting, a moderated eForum with pre-determined discussion threads, eSurveys to quantify opinions, and an interactive online real-time webcast of the city council proceedings, where citizens can offer their feedback directly. With the aim to cultivate and promote a ‘culture of participation’, this platform is based on good practices from around the world.

In view of the above, there is no wonder why eDialogos is also the best practice selected to be transferred by all DC ‘emerging’ partners in the context of the DC project. The recognition by the DC project partners with regard to the utility of this eDemocracy platform for strengthening democratic governance at the local level was surely enhanced by its wide recognition across Europe.

• “Digital Cities for the Next Generation: Research Challenges from the Field”, Yannis Charalabidis, National Technical University Athens / ICCS, Greece
• “Building Digital Infrastructures and Services in Municipalities: the Case of Trikala City” Olivera Djordjevic, e-Trikala, Greece
• “Developing Digital Cities in the Context of the Knowledge-Based Economy: Towards an Integrated Approach”, Emmanouil Ergazakis, National Technical University of Athens / ICCS, Greece
• “Developing Digital Cities Best Practices: The Case of Almere”, Tamer el Masri, Almere Kennisstad, Netherlands

For more information or a copy of presentations please contact yannisx at epu.ntua.gr

The survey ranked services according to a number of criteria in an exercise carried out every two years. Malta was second in the last survey.  The result was greeted with satisfaction this afternoon by IT Minister Austin Gatt, who said: “the results were particularly welcome as the concept of e-government was only launched nine years ago.”

The Maltese e-government portal registered some four million transactions a month and the payment gateway handles around €40m per year.

The report, commissioned by the European Commission, assessed countries on the basis of online availability of public services, sophistication, user experience, availability of e-procurement and pro-activity.

At a press conference Dr Gatt also replied to questions on e-ID cards and said Malta had applied to the EU for financial assistance, but it had not yet received a reply.  On IT use in the voting process, Dr Gatt said the issue was not technological but one of mentality. Many people, he said, were afraid to use computers to submit their vote.

Video from the event was streamed live by Digital Cities project partner MDDA using the free video streaming service Livestream. Videos of the speakers are available to watch online at Vimeo.

Among others, the participants discussed  the  prospects of INeC ‘enlargement’ with cities that have lower rates of ICT adoption. After an INeC internal decision, a sort of membership to INeC may be offered to DC members Paralimni, Xanthi and Jesenik. Vivid discussion between participants took place on the topic of the evident problems of the low ICT adoption rate by non-metropolitan and geographically isolated local authorities, as compared to the local authorities of the INeC consortium.

On the second day, participants of the meeting took a bicycle tour around Almere with the excellent guidance of Mr. Gerard Jansen and Mr. Tamer el Masri. During the tour, the Almere ICT services’ history, idea and current developments were presented. All were particularly impressed by the ‘fibre-to-the-home’ project developments.

This provided the project partners with the opportunity to discuss what had been achieved since the kick-off meeting in Athens in November 2008 and to plan activities for the rest of 2009.

Members of Digital Cities project consortium at Malta steering committee meeting, April 2009

A number of key priorities for future work were agreed, including:

• developing strong case studies of what digital cities are achieving;
• making good working links with networks active in this field, such as Eurocities and the International Network of e-Communities – i-nec
• communicating best practice examples both from existing project partners and from other projects that they are involved in;
• building a strong dissemination platform for the project, both through the website but also through events with other projects and networks.

The partners agreed on a new logo for the project, after much discussion, and on the events it would plan during 2009, working with INeC and the eChallenges 2009 conference.

During the last years, extensive broadband infrastructures are being constructed in cities worldwide, offering high-speed connectivity to public organisations, businesses and citizens, that allow the deployment of electronic services. These digital public services aim at both economic objectives (such as enhanced competitiveness and growth) and social objectives (such as higher quality of life, better services to various groups, social networking and inclusion, environmental protection).

It is important to analyse systematically these ‘digital cities’ projects (usually including both network infrastructures and applications/e-services). Gaining knowledge from them is going to be useful for improving both design and implementation of future attempts, and also public policy making in this area.
In particular, it is important to gain a deeper understanding of the main motivation and objectives of these projects, the main difficulties and challenges they faced, the business models they adopted and the role of both public organisations and private companies, and assess their social, economic and other city/municipality-related impact and value.

The proposed workshop on Digital Cities will be investigating the above issues, with main emphasis on the following topics:

• Motivation and objectives for developing broadband infrastructures and applications/e-services on them
• Detailed analysis of such broadband infrastructures or electronic service development projects in municipal contexts
• Adoption of applications / e-services by the public and factors affecting it
• Main challenges and difficulties faced during digital cities projects
• Reports on achievements, current situation analysis of digital cities projects
• Mobile applications and field force automation in government based on broadband infrastructures
• Assessment of social, economic and other city-related impacts of such projects
• Decision-making tools and models for assisting elected representatives and city officials in ‘digital planning and management’
• Approaches for managing digital transformation and policy support for municipalities
• Business models, role of public companies and private organisations (such as municipalities and government)
• Projects and initiatives specifically targeting e-Inclusion or minimisation of Digital Divides, at municipal level
• Specific applications and lessons learnt in developing countries or regions
• Future, forward looking approaches and initiatives for digital cities.

Through a series of workshops and face-to-face meetings, partners were able to work directly with experienced practitioners from across Europe. The best practices provide a great opportunity for partners and their organisations to build on real-life know-how before taking on a large-scale digital challenge.

As we progress we aim to incorporate the DC planner toolkit, a tool that will allow users of the portal to produce their own DC planning through an interactive database, which analyses regional indicators and strategic priorities. The Digital Cities portal is still in beta, which we hope to release to a wider community soon. (www.dc-portal.org.)