Since the beginning of the month of January 2011, digital information screens have been installed in the town centres of Heule, Marke, Rollegem, Bellegem and at Overleie. The town centres of Bissegem, Aalbeke and Kooigem will follow later. The digital screens supply, for the greater part, local information on all sorts of cultural events in the community centres.

As from today the city of Kortrijk, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven campus Kortrijk, Howest and Katho link their hotspot-networks. Wherever there is coverage of hotspots from these organisations, students can easily and free access internet. The only thing they need is their eduroam login and password.

The City of Kortrijk starts experiments with different types of information screens both inside and outside the city buildings. These screens will provide services to visitors of the city.

We mainly distinguish screens for one-way communication (narrowcasting) and interactive screens (I-Points and other public computers). Both can be placed inside buildings and outside on the street.

The City of Kortrijk presented ideas on midware and personalised services at the Eurocities Knowledge Society Forum in Tallinn (Estonia). In his presentation, Luk Van Beneden stressed the importance of exchanging data in order to provide integrated governmental services.

The City Kortrijk launches one number and a call center where customer officers handle all questions from citizens.

This project is based on the "Answer" framework (Netherlands) and builds on the German experience of the Oldenburg contact centre the Smart Cities partners visited in September.

The hotspots of the city are now recognizable wih the new hotspot-logo the city uses. The city has now 60 hotspots in use over 25 locations in the city, in city buildings but also on two important market places in the city center.

On these hotspots people can access the internet with a pda or a laptop. The city will deliver location-based services on this channel in the near future.

On a two day seminar on personalised services, the partners learned more about policy, privacy and technical issues involved in building this kind of services. The partners of the Kortrijk city and region presented their plans, to be developed in the Smart Cities project. An overview.

This workshop presents views and insights on personalised web portals, from the perceived need of personalised services, business model and the model behind self service web services to the way those services need to be developed. This academy goes deeper in the “why?” and the “how?” of personalised services.

The federal Minister of Economy and ICT, Vincent Van Quickenborne will open and attend the E-Gov Acadamy on Personalised Services in May. His presence is a real support for our project and for the mainstreaming of the results of the work of the partnership.

The City of Kortrijk launched a hotspot network in the central library, city hall and community centres in the surrounding burroughs of the city.