Local Democratic Network
"Lo.De.Net"
Participants
Birth of the project idea
Official start
Description of the project
Results
Photoalbum
Municipalities of Bologna, Tampere and Nizhny Novgorod.
Municipality of Bologna is a patner of Nizhny Novgorod due to the "Declaration of intent between the Municipalities of Nizhny Novgorod and Bologna" signed in June 1992.
The cities of Nizhny Novgorod and Tampere are twinned. The twin city
agreement between two cities has been undersigned in the beginning of
the year 1995.
To see photos of project participants...
In 1997 the Municipality of Bologna hosted one of the Seminars organised in the framework of the Tacis City Twinning Programme concerning the theme of the reform of public administrations in Europe and in the NIS, where also the cities of Tampere and Nizhny Novgorod took part. The programme of the seminar scheduled also a workshop session concerning the subject of information and communication to the citizens hosted by the City of Bologna, where the experience of the City in this field was presented.
To that public occasion followed other contacts among the Local Authorities of Bologna, Nizhny Novgorod and Tampere that finally identified the theme of the development of the Internet civic network as an interesting field of cooperation.
From 5 to 9 October 1998, a delegation of managers of the Municipality of Nizhny Novgorod visited thus Bologna in order to exchange information, documents, materials and see concretely how the two cities are involved and concretely operate on these matters. This leaded to define concretely terms and conditions of the co-operation and draft a joint project proposal on this subject in the framework of the Tacis City Twinning Programme.
TACIS project "Local Democratic Network" started in December 1999, when the Commission of the European Communities and Bologna municipality (as the Contractor of the project) signed "Co-financing contract under the TACIS Twinning.
The aim of the project is to create an Internet Civic network in Nizhny Novgorod municipality in order to :
- guarantee the citizens' participation to the Local Authority activities and decisions . Through a friendly interface to the public, people can be informed on administrative matters and participate to the decision-making process at local level. It can be a tool for the City Council to govern better, to come to know the citizens' needs, thus contributing to a democratic functioning of the local government;
- improve local government efficiency, in terms of rationalisation of offices' and sectors' activities and actions so to provide public services far more widely, rapidly and effectively;
- foster a widespread social telematic awarness, helping the citizens in the use of technologies that are proper of the information society. In this way, the civic network will contribute to oppose, by means of concrete actions, elitism of any kind and consequent social discrimination, facing the problem of citizens' illiteracy and creating, at the same time, new professionalism, markets and products, employment, know-how transferring, ...;
- contribute to develop and strengthen lasting co-operation and exchange of experiences among the citizen information services of the three Municipalities;
- provide and increase progressively the dissemination of information about the city on the widest possible scale.
During the project the Municipality of Nizhny Novgorod was to:
- create official web-site of Nizhny Novgorod Administration, where all the information about administration`s activity, procedures, laws, programs etc. is to be placed;
- open two free Internet access points in the building of the administration.
One of the main resultes of the project was the meeting between trainees from Nizhny Novgorod and the mayor of Nizhny Novgorod. The meeting was organized by Perti Paltila - the head of international affairs department of Tampere municipality - during the second training phase in Tampere. The trainees had an opportunity to show their mayor opportunities and possibilities given by the project and to get an encouragement from him.
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Tampere city hall. The mayor
of Nizhny Novgorod Yuri Lebedev
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During the project within the municipality of Nizhny Novgorod in Information and analysis department the group responsible for administration web-site development was created. By now the official web-site of Nizhny Novgorod Administration works on http://www.admgor.nnov.ru/.
Departments of the municipality found an interest in providing their information to population through Internet. Having started from only fixed information about telephone numbers and regulations about Administration activity web-site now provides daily updated information on Administration news, competitions, reports etc.
Two free Internet access points were opened 6 December 2000 in the building of Administration. In two minutes after announcement had been placed first users came into it.
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First users of free Internet
access points
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How the creation
of free Internet points took place (photo-report)...
Photos made by Jari Seppala - project manager from Tampere municipality