The local Smart Cities projects are running on full speed. The government partners are building local pilots in various domains of the Smart Cities project. An overview.

Edinburgh reviews processes

A brand new report is agreed in Edinburgh, setting out a very tight timescale for the first customer services “pilot” business process review within the council. It also approves the Web content Management project funding for the next two years, and various other strands of the Customer Services Strategy that was presented earlier on in the project.

See the download section of the website, WP3, processes: CEC report

Kristiansand and Lillesand redesign services

The municipality of Kristiansand is redesigning existing services and implementing e-forms and the underlying processes.
1. Registration for primary school and applying for After school programe.
2. Applying for leisure boat mooring space
3. Automation of the Kindergarten application
4. The festival process (including all necessary permits for arranging different kind of festive events)
5. Grants to voluntary sector (handling applications, decisions and pay-outs)

Same activity in Lillesand, where people work on:

1. Kindergarten application
2. Culture fund application
3. Alcohol license application

Lillesand is also working on these issues:

- improvement of public access to their case information on municipality's web site. The executive officers must have possibility to choose appropriate status and activities before making them available for the public.
- possibility to use wizard to guide an executive officer through a process handling when handling new cases
- fine-tuning to make the User Interface in process and document window more efficient
- integration with national My Page
- new version of e-form solution, with appropriate information to users regarding their rights, national regulations and expectations

Bremerhaven reviews hardware

Bremerhaven is reviewing different hardware and software options for the Bluetooth project. This is a project for transmitting information on public transport. Choosing the right hardware is crucial to the success of what Bremerhaven tries to do.

"Currently, we’re reviewing different Bluteooth Hotspot / Bluetooth Marketing systems and are talking to various suppliers / manufacturers. We’re trying to get an impression about available hardware & software solutions as well as pricing, outdoor capabilities, wireless range issues, maintenance and remote access options and everything else that might be important."

Karlstad prepares e-office

Karlstad continuously identifies various processes that are appropriate to carry out as e-services and supported by the work methods in e-office. Until there are 3 projects (work processes) which will be implemented with support of the e-office.

"This allows us to test the models and guidelines we have developed so far. The 3 processes identified are:

- E-service for citizen reporting in reading water meters in houses.

- E-service for applying for association contribution (for non-profit organizations).

- Hopefully the E-service to digitalize different forms. We will meet with various vendors to look at different solution.

We are now scheduling these projects for autumn 2009. A project has started to set up a roadmap for the development of the municipality towards e-government. This roadmap is function-oriented and will contain various modules that we see must be implemented to achieve goal of an e-government platform with the conditions we have in our municipality in form of economy and other resources."

Kortrijk integrates services

Policymakers want to announce a free phone number in Kortrijk where citizens can ask for information and report potholes. A local team will start up an project to broaden this idea to the concept of a contactcentre. Several meetings are planned on this subject in June.

Kortrijk supports the department of urban development which wants to set up a new desk "Woonwinkel" (housing shop) before the end of this year. The desk should cover all information and transactions related to housing. The support consists of helping responsible people thinking about their products, target groups, contact with possible customers, process flow.

In Kortrijk the Smart Cities project focuses on delivering existing services via the “MyPage” channel, i.e. a personalised portal on the City website. This supposes the disclosure of our backoffice. The Belgian Electronic ID-card (EID) enables safe online authentication, which is the start for a whole gamma of services that could be delivered via the website. The disclosure of the backoffice presupposes an intelligent midware system where the existing resources are linked together. Besides of that we examine and test new channels like digital signage (info screens) and the out roll of a hotspot network in city buildings and local high schools. A network of digital kiosks for touristic information is also investigated.

Leiedal works on interfaces and methodologies

Leiedal develops a contact databank with Kortrijk and other municipalities. A demo of a personalised webpage using profile data of a registrated user was presented on a local e-government academy on user profiling and marketing in June.
On that same Academy, a demo of a portal page upon the municipality websites of Wevelgem and Harelbeke presenting products, news and pages for families and business, based on Directgov was presented.

Leiedal will develop a generic interface for presenting localised information on the municipal websites using Google Maps and Govmaps. The data-layers entered in Govmaps (GIS infrastructure) will be presented in a Google Maps interface. The map can center on an address or a chosen point, and users can see data coming from different layers. This generic interface will be tested with family-related data in Kortrijk: playgrounds,... A manual will be written for the municipalities giving them the workflow for developing this kind of maps.

A discussion with CEO's of the municipalities to detect their needs for workshops about processes, organisational change, change management and quality of service and service delivery will lead to a programme of workshops in the autumn of 2009.

A report for local stakeholders on Smart Cities activity 2008-2009, describing all activities and pilots, was presented at the board of Leiedal and the municipalities.

Osterholz-Scharmbeck builds a new portal

In June the local steering group of the city of Osterholz-Scharmbeck took major decisions concerning the new web portal and the internal databases. Based on the results of the regional survey (more than 500 citizens and SMEs were involved in deep interviews) and the discussions within the transnational work groups it was agreed, that:

- A new web portal will be implemented with main focus on usability aspects and interactive governmental services. Furthermore a beta test group will be implemented which works out indicators for long term quality evaluation.
- Within this year a new middleware will be implemented and connected to the major databases. Next will be a deep analysis of the existing tools and databases. This will help to create a lean information management. These steps are based on discussions concerning a mypage concept with the partners from Belgium and UK.
- The intranet will be redeveloped under the scope of usability and internal reporting indicators. The development will be a participation process where citizens, staff members and decision makers are involved. (based on discussions with Norwegian and Swedish partners)
- A process modeller will be implemented and connected to the middleware (based on recommendations from UK and Norway). Furthermore the first 3 processes should get optimized within this year.
- A GIS database system will be integrated and connected to the middleware. Therefore a new concept concerning future possibilities of GIS Government systems will be worked out.

Customer Insight in Norfolk County

Norfolk County Council is building on Customer Insight, providing intelligence to all departments. Goals: mapping delivery to need and improving services.
- Service directories – updating information on services mapped and presented around customer groups/profiles
- Timely Information – pulling online info together based on communities
- Services2gether – local community owned access points
- Corporate GIS – moving to integrated map based views of information