Policy Context and Legal Framework

The Interactive City Council had been realised within the framework of Issy's "Local Information Plan" (Plan Local de l'Information). Under the impulsion of its Mayor, André Santini, the city adopted the Local Information Plan as early as 1996 with the objective to speed up the pace of technology innovation and to transform Issy-les-Moulineaux into a "digital city" at the forefront of e-Democracy and e-Government. An approach that was in line with the strategy for economic development initiated by the mayor: Attracting more companies in promising sectors in order to accelerate the transformation of the city. The Local Information Plan focuses on four priority areas: i) modernising the city's public administration, ii) provision of a large spectrum of new services to Issy's population, iii) fostering digital inclusion, and iv) the promotion of local democracy and citizens' participation to support political decision-making based on dialogue and consultation. By 2006, Issy had become France's most advanced broadband economy, with major benefits for government, citizens and business, including the creation of more jobs than it has residents. Local government's ICT infrastructure had undergone vast changes: Government, school, library, and health care buildings are fully wired with broadband. A robust e-Government portal provides online public procurement, online training, and access to a "citizen relationship management" system called IRIS. An outsourcing contract has allowed Issy to substantially reduce costs: In a 2005 survey, the city ranked number 14 out of 110 French cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants for operating costs. Issy's Interactive City Council also contributes to the realisation of the specific objectives of the EU i2010 eGovernment Action Plan, and in particular to the priority area "Strengthening participation and democratic decision-making - demonstrating, by 2010, tools for effective public debate and participation in democratic decision-making".

Implementation and Management Approach

The Interactive City Council is directly affiliated to the City Hall of Issy-les-Moulineaux. The technical development and evolution of the Interactive City Council is managed by Issy Média, a semi-public corporation, in charge of the city's communication and ICT strategy. 58% of the Issy Média is owned by the city of Issy-les-Moulineaux. Further shareholders are companies based in Issy. By bringing together the companies based in Issy, the Mayor of Issy-les-Moulineaux, André Santini, generated a virtuous circle enabling the companies to develop under best conditions, while at the same time offering Issy’s citizens the possibility to benefit from new services such as the Interactive City Council. A partnership with the cable operator "Noos NumériCâble" has been set up for the broadcasting of the Council meetings on the cable TV network. A co-operation has been established with the mobile operator Orange for the broadcasting of the City Council meetings on mobile phones. Multi-channel issues: The Interactive City Council relies on a multi-channel approach in order to involve as many citizens as possible: The City Council meetings are broadcasted simultaneously on cable TV, on the Internet (http://www.issy.tv) and, since 2006, also on mobile phones. For those who do not have access to these technologies, two public access points stay open late in the evening on the occasion of the Council meetings. Starting at 18:30h, the Council meetings are broadcasted live. During the City Council meetings, citizens can ask questions directly to their elected political representatives: either by phone or by e-mail.

Impact

Despite the fact that City Council meetings have always been open to the public (as required by law), only few citizens attended the meetings before the creation of the Interactive City Council. Today, 45% of Issy’s households are regularly participating online. The key factor for its success was an increase in transparency, which improved many citizens' views of their elected representatives. Never before had so many people attended the Council meetings and very few inhabitants had imagined the extent of the tasks the Council Members are entrusted with. By promoting and developing a new form of citizenship enabled and empowered by ICT, Issy has succeeded to integrate its citizens into the democratic life and decision-making process of its local community. Today, the City Council meetings are part and parcel of Issy’s local political life: The City Council meets about six times a year, starting at 18:30h in the evening. The broadcasting of the Council meetings is preceded by a news programme on Issy's local TV channel T2i (Issy's Interactive Television), which presents and explains the main items on the Council meeting agenda. The objective is to present and to explain the main topics that will be discussed during the Council meeting in a way that allows citizens who are not very familiar with the technical or administrative language used to follow and to participate in the meetings. A Council meeting can last up to 6 hours. In the forerun of each Council meeting, leaflets informing about the meeting agenda and the estimated time schedule for each item are distributed to every household. Thus, people can tune in during the period of time the Council is discussing the subject they are interested in. The citizens consult the agenda of the Council meetings on the website, watch meetings via cable TV, Internet or mobile phone, ask questions live or consult the decisions several months after they have been adopted. This has completely changed the ways of accessing municipal information. In Issy-les-Moulineaux, consultation has become a notion that has regulated the city's decision-making for a long time now. Today, no project sees the light of day without at least one public meeting, and no decisions are made without those concerned being consulted. The great success of the Interactive City Council, which has been an important part of a series of actions aimed at promoting participatory democracy (e.g., the initiative "Allô Monsieur le Maire" - a possibility to directly ask questions to the Mayor, public consultations, or an electronic forum on the web site of the city), paved the way for further e-consultation initiatives: In 2002, the "Issy Citizen Panel" has been launched. The Citizen Panel is a representative group of citizens that is regularly consulted via Internet by the City Council on important local issues. Also in 2002 a "Participative Budget Making Platform", enabling citizens at district level to assist the City in setting local investment priorities, has been created. The initial financial investment needed for the realisation of the Interactive City Council has been rather low due to the fact that an essential part of the technical equipment was already available. Moreover, a meeting room at the City Hall has been transformed into a large multimedia conference room. The room is equipped for meeting capture with screens and microphones at every seat, cameras, and a large video projector. But because this meeting room of the City Council is used as "multimedia room" on various other occasions during the year, the investment had a very short payback period. Innovation: The Interactive City Council promotes citizenship participation based on a concept that includes the right to participation as a basic human right. Issy's Interactive City Council goes beyond the current state-of-the art by providing real multi-channel access and especially by providing interactivity between the citizens and the City Council Members. The mobile TV feature of the Interactive City Council, which enables citizens to watch the Council meetings on their mobile phones, is the technically most advanced one. Many comparable initiatives are still limited to broadcasting City Council meetings over the Internet. In contrast to other initiatives dealing with the broadcasting of City Council meetings, Issy's citizens are able to intervene, to ask questions to their elected representatives via phone or e-mail and to get an immediate response. Thus, the citizens of Issy-les-Moulineaux are not only passive observers of the meeting, but active participants. Such functionality is less a technological issue than an organisational challenge, which requires efficient coordination and discipline in order not to make the council meetings a "show".

Track record of sharing

Intensive international co-operation and active networking to share its experience with other cities is one of Issy's priorities: Since 2000, Issy chairs the Global Cities Dialogue, a worldwide network of 187 cities committed to share good practices in order to create an Information Society free of digital divide and based on sustainable development. From 1998 to 2002, Issy has been the co-ordinator of the URB-AL Network 3, a network dedicated to the exchange of good practice between European and Latin-American cites related to the network's topic "Democracy in the City". Furthermore, Issy has been member of the URB-AL Network 13 (2003 to 2007), which was dedicated to the exchange of good practice between European and Latin-American cites related to the topic "Towns and the Information Society". In order to provide an international platform for the exchange of information and good practices among local, regional and national governments, Issy initiated the "World eGov Forum on eDemocracy and eAdministration". Since 2000, Issy annually organizes and hosts this truly international event, attended each year by about 1,500 participants from more than 30 countries. The Interactive City Council has been demonstrated and promoted within the framework of each of the mentioned initiatives, met with great interest from the participating partners. Following the example of Issy-les-Moulineaux, other the French cities, among them the cities Paris, Perpignan and Amiens, started broadcasting their City Council Meetings on the Internet.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - Putting in place the technology is not enough: To make such project a success, it has to be coupled with a sound communication campaign designed to build awareness of this new opportunity and to inform and to educate citizens on how to use it. Lesson 2. New technology is changing the balance of power: Such use of ICT enables a new model of citizenship, where the citizens are both better informed and more demanding. Local governments, and in this case the member of the City Council, had to learn to adapt to this new political behaviour. Furthermore, they need to be perfectly acquainted with all cases concerning local life and reply live to the citizen’s questions. It already happened that the members of the City Council reviewed their initial decision after a discussion with the public. Lesson 3 - You can always do better: With technology evolving as rapidly as it is, there is no time to stand still once the projects has been implemented. There is always margin to improve your service and you should continuously look for new technological solutions to be included in your service to better meet citizens expectations and needs.