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Challenge of eCitizen - Promoting eGovernment Actions in European Cities (eCitizen)
Start date: Dec 31, 2004, End date: Dec 30, 2007 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The project is designed to support local eGovernment initiatives, actions and strategies through the exchange and dissemination of information, best practices and successful technical innovations acquired in the partner cities and Europe-wide. The partners aim to enhance the capacities, management skills and technical knowledge of local policy-makers, officials and experts responsible for eGovernment actions to design, manage and evaluate local technology-based public services. This goal is supported by promoting innovative approaches in establishing partnerships between public and private sectors as well as encouraging use of electronic communication in the public sector, among citizens and businesses. Furthermore, the project aims to raise public awareness on eGovernment actions as well as encourage citizens' participation in the democratic processes through Internet. Achievements: Challenge of eCitizen project started its activities early 2005, and proceeded well towards the goals set in three subject categories: eManagement for city administrations as well eServices and eParticipation targeted at citizens, with awareness raising as a cross-cutting theme. Concrete results were achieved by all 11 partners from 10 partner cities. New services for city administration and citizens were designed, implemented and tested, and they were promoted to local citizens, city administrations, local decision-makers and other target audiences. Document management systems, open source solutions, smart cards and eDemocracy were focuses of research and studies conducted in the partner cities. eCitizen partners were able to exhange their experiences and lessons learnt in many of the project's face-to-face and virtual events, organised in thematic components. Results were delivered to all partners also via the project intranet. Concrete pilot activities covered eGovernment in a wide sense. In the sphere of eManagement, Turku finalised and took into use eGovernment desktop for city administration, Kaunas developed an information system for EU projects and Vaasa tested solutions of paperless administration. In eServices, Tartu developed new mobile services for citizens, including Tartu WAP portal, Vaasa developed its Waasa card and investigated digital signature issues, Trento provided other partners with research on OpenSource solutions, and implemented a novel mService for citizens, COsmOs, a system that can analyze user's requests in everyday language and provide a proper answer. Tampere, Sheffield and Bologna concentrated on eDemocracy and eParticipation. Sheffield prepared a collection of best practices in eDemocracy and a training package, both available on project website. Bologna and Tampere developed local eParticipation tools: Iperbol Wireless portal in Bologna, and Valma eParticipation tool and Web Alvari citizens' panel in Tampere. IS Fyn coordinated making a thorough study on European eGovernment actions, available on project website. The study comprises about 30 cases throughout Europe, and is the main joint output of the project. Experiences from the project have also been taken into account in some partner cities' wider development plans and strategies, and thus the project has widened its effect also beyond the project. Addressing larger audience gained importance towards the end of the project, and partner cities prepared awareness raising plans and strategies to support concrete promotion activities. The partners of the well-functioning partnership complemented each other as planned, and they have proven to be able to provide each other with new insights into the development of eGovernment. Discussion on continuing the cooperation has started, and has already lead to new concrete project ideas, of which eCitizen 2.0 is the prominent one.
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  • 52.2%   696 406,02
  • 2000 - 2006 Interreg IIIC North
  • Project on KEEP Platform
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11 Partners Participants