Kortrijk
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The city of Kortrijk has a population of 75,000, and is in the south of the Belgian province of West-Flanders on the Leie River. It is 25 kilometres north-east of the French city of Lille and 42 km southwest of Ghent. Kortrijk, Lille and the Belgian city of Tournai make up the transnational Eurodistrict of Rijsel-Kortrijk-Doornik, which has a population of approximately 1,900,000.
In the 19th and 20th century Kortrijk was an important centre of the flax industry, and the textile industry is still important today. The last 30 years has seen a diversification of economic activity, with the growth of electronics industries and automotive suppliers. Over the last ten years the city has focused on developing the design industry.
News
Projects
Kortrijk has a wide range of local pilots as part of the Smart Cities project:
Project 1777 – The free phone number 1777 is a single phone number citizens can use to contact a variety of municipal services. Specially trained staff guide callers to the right service and the right person. This is the first step towards the development of a customer contact centre.
Process Description (Mavim) – Kortrijk is using process descriptions as part of efforts to digitalise business processes.
Narrowcasting screens – interior and exterior – Cultural and sports events that use the city’s facilities will be promoted not just on screens inside city buildings but also on external digital signs/LED walls. While each channel will have specific/targeted content, they will both be steered by the same software and the same team in the municipality.
I-Points: digital tourist kiosks – In the summer of 2010 this pilot will install eye-catching touch-screens that provide tourist information in different places in the city.
Frame portal for WiFi networks and I-points – The portal that provides content for the I-point digital tourism kiosks will be accessible via the city’s WiFi-networks and on the university campuses. It will collect information from a range of existing databases and deliver this to touchscreens, mobile devices and normal computers.
Mypage and authentication – A first test for the authentication possibilities of the Belgian E-ID card will be the online authentication of city council members when accessing the city’s intranet and e-decision system.
This pilot will combine three existing customer contact phone numbers into one free telephone number - 1777. The pilot will bring different teams together, and facilitate work on service catalogues and product descriptions.
The I-scan is an instrument to detect the balance between IT and governance : in other words how is the IT-department integrated in the organisation ? A second issue is the implementation of an inquiry into egov at the local level.
The new tourist office is a bit “hidden”, i.e. not so easy to find for tourists. The pilot will install make 5 digital interactive kiosks as “antennas” at places where visitors/tourists enter the city.
The university campus KULAK (part of the university of Leuven) and two technical university campuses (Katho and Howest) will be linked with the city network, first via EDUROAM and then by starting a common SSID on all hotspot-networks “student-in-kortrijk”.
The pilot will improve services to citizens at the local level by linking the products (product catalogue) on the website to the internal processes (connecting front and back office). The process flow software “mavim” will be used to do this.
Kortrijk is looking for a platform that re-uses available information from different data sources and delivers this to tourist kiosks and Wi-Fi networks. We intend especially to address all kind of visitors of the city (tourists, students from outside the city, visitors of the international fair complex)
This pilot will provide easy to use online authentication and authorisation for the E-decision system for all members of the city council.
We have no solid solution for handling personal data. The pilot will create a shared contact database where the accuracy of the data is either assured by a link with an authentic data source either by delegating the maintaining of the data or by the owner itself.
The city wants to discover the possibilities of narrowcasting. We are exploring the possibilities of this channel as a result of the procurement of the 5 led-walls. The intention is to have a visually stunning medium that replaces paper posters and other ways of announcing cultural events.
The city wants to streamline all communication and to offer associations the benefit of free promotion of their activities. For that purpose we roll out a network of information screens in city premises. There will be a network of at least two screens in every city building where visitors come and /or use premises.