Lessius Mechelen University College (MEMORI)

Mechelen, Belgium
www.memori.be
MEMORI is the research institute of the University College of Mechelen. Professional education is the core activity of the College of Mechelen, which is an associated partner of the University of Louvain. Mechelen is situated in the centre of Belgium and hence of Europe. MEMORI has particular expertise in a number of relevant research fields, including public communications, communication of non-governmental organizations, local participatory democracy and local e-government.

MEMORI engages in applied scientific research for municipalities, local authorities and social profit organizations. We position ourselves as “the missing link” between theory and practice, and we value the integration of research findings into the actual work of governments and non-governmental organizations as highly as we value scientific research.

As a part of the SCRAN network, MEMORI aims to offer support to the government partners, to qualify good practices, and to translate the findings from the project pilots into good practice, research papers, and transferrable methodologies. MEMORI has produced a toolkit for cities to use to measure levels of supply and demand for e-services and e-government, compared statistics on ICT use in the Smart Cities countries, and produced an analysis of security risk identification methods for city councils.
MEMORI is also developing a Smart Cities Framework, which provides a broad perspective on the ‘Smart City’. A Smart City is a city which develops their digital facilities, starting from ten approaches which each focus on a particular type of user. MEMORI will develop a self evaluation tool for local governments that is based on this framework paper.

MEMORI is also working closely with local project partners Kortrijk and Leiedal on several projects, including:
A series of local e-government academies
The website www.zegonshoehetkan.be. This website invites customers to co-design municipal and regional electronic services by collecting user stories. The City of Kortrijk, MEMORI and Leiedal have worked together in creating customer-focused electronic service solutions. The website invites people to give their ideas, not by asking them for specific solutions, but by asking them to tell their stories of what services they need and how they want to use them.
A survey for the municipalities in the Kortrijk region that measures citizen’s e-government needs. The results of the study will be the used to influence local and regional e-government policies. The first results of this research project are expected in the spring of 2010: Leiedal is responsible for data input and project management, while MEMORI will design and deliver the survey, and analyse and report the results.