In this frame, 3 pilot projects  will be created in the UK, France and Lithuania, as well as a central debate pilot. WAVE will mainly target cross-border discussions on drafted and implemented legislation. These discussions will be facilitated on Debategraph so as to understand the impact of the proposed and implemented legislation.Uniquely, Debategraph will not only enable citizens and decision makers with differing points of view to more easily comprehend complex environmental debates; it will also empower them - through the use of a collaborative wiki - to work together in developing integrated feedback on legislation.WAVE will closely work with MEPs and MPs in order to ultimately join up with and inform at least three governments-the national governments of the three trial sites - UK, France and Lithuania. The climate change debate will be used to test the effectiveness of argument visualisation tools in helping citizens from a variety of demographics to better understand complex issues and evaluate the conditions under which these tools can bear an impact on the environment.

• Interconnecting existing services and networks.
• Leveraging redundant communication channels.
• Using automatic redirection and/or service transformation in case of failures.
• Using new research results in the area of wireless ad-hoc networks.

• (i) a "Digital Library Technology and Methodology Cookbook" providing a portfolio of current best practices and patterns to facilitate cross-fertilization between existing systems and their enhancement in terms of critical interoperability issues;
• (ii) (a consolidated and enhanced version of the DELOS Digital Library Reference Model;
• (iii) workshops, summer schools, eCourses and dissemination activities to communicate the impact of DL.org achievements to relevant communities.

1. Bundling of services for companies with the municipal Internet portal 'Virtual SME Office':
(a) Bundling of services from a company perspective
(b) Bundling of services by a single point of contact

2. Modernisation of the administration for companies:
(a) Implementation of the EU Services Directive
(b) Reduction of bureaucratic obstacles
(c) Conveying of a new service philosophy
(d) Strengthening of the European and local economic region through the improvement of local government services for companies.

3. Technological innovations for companies:
(a) Integrated product and process model with modeling tool
(b) Service-oriented architecture (SOA technology)
(c) Interoperability of all components and transferability to services for citizens
(d) Electronic handling of process for all formalities.

4. High-tech/low-cost approach:
(a) Innovations were implemented for companies within the framework of effectively used budgets and with the existing staff.
(b) The entire project had scientific support and evaluation throughout.

Firstly, Access-eGov can identify the general administrative procedure that needs to be followed in a specific situation and a by specific citizen, for example when wanting to register an enterprise. Depending on the user's needs and their specific situation, a personalized to-do list is set up.

Secondly, Access-eGov identifies which offices are responsible for which step in the process and lists the available services of individual government offices. In most cases, the created scenarios are of a "hybrid" nature, i.e. a combination of traditional and electronic services - depending on the services offered by the responsible administration.

For citizens and business users, Access-eGov provides a personal assistant, guiding the user through the generated scenario. For service providers (i.e. public administration institutions) on all levels, Access-eGov enables easy introduction of a new (e-) service into the world of e-government interoperability and a methodology for describing workflows for new life events.

During the project, the system has been tested on the three life events establishing an enterprise, getting a building permit and getting married.

It will initially involve at least two professional categories of service providers and its results will be widely promoted to raise awareness and to encourage innovative solutions for administrative simplification. A special effort will be placed on the dissemination of open specifications, the sharing of knowledge and best practices, as well as the encouragement for further cooperation.

A wide range of organisations is represented among the partners in order to ensure that the value chain - from decision makers to service providers and IT solutions - is well balanced, and to allow
contributions from different backgrounds.

The Challenge: Equality & Compliance
Four years ago, Gr?p Gwalia carried out an analysis of their financial management systems. Their Procurement and Business Management department were given the remit to identify an eProcurement package and to implement the solution into the organisation. The initial driver stemmed from the inherent problem of operating such a geographically widespread organisation with diverse business units. This led to an inequality between the business units in the service that was offered by the central Procurement team through a lengthy paper requisition and authorisation process. Furthermore, the items that the business units received would often differ from requisition to requisition as there was no visibility as to what would be finally procured.

On producing the business case, it was clear that xchangewales and ProcServe would offer Gr?p Gwalia the solution to combat these challenges through an online catalogue system which would ensure a smoother procurement cycle, product visibility to users and compliance to the Group's financial regulations. The business case for eProcurement also centred on:

• Improved management information, including more accurate budgetary information.
• Securing more spending power through collaboration.
• Compliance to internal business rules surrounding procurement.
• Easing the bottlenecks and delays within the procurement cycle - start thinking about procurement as strategic to the success of the organisation instead of a back office function.

The initiative concerns giving every citizen in Denmark the ability to benefit by ICT. The aim is that citizens' level of ICT skills is further improved through the increased and improved provision and use of ICT courses.

The network consists of trade unions and associations, libraries, public citizens' service centres, interest organisations and adult educational associations. One of the starting points of the network is a flexible ICT-pedagogical concept developed specifically for the network. The concept is particularly useful when teaching people with no or very low ICT-skills, but is flexible enough to be applicable for higher levels as well. Selected persons from the involved organisations, working with training as an everyday job task, have during 2008 - 2009 received an ICT-teacher training particularly developed for the initiative. In the future more ICT-teachers will be trained in the concept by colleagues in the partner organisations, however, one should note that this training is not a prerequisite for involvement - it is to be considered as a supportive measure for the entire work within the framework of the network.

To support the development and knowledge sharing of education material, the website www.It-formidler.dk has been developed.  The site is an online production facility for education material and archive for the developed and uploaded material at the same time. Furthermore, ICT-teachers can use It-formidler.dk as a virtual meeting place. Everybody can download the education material for free and use it for training courses.

In order to communicate and create widespread awareness about the importance and benefits of good ICT-skills, "Learn more about ICT" is being supported by a national campaign about digital literacy, focusing on creating motivation in the target group. The campaign consists of television programmes, radio spots and the development of a campaign website at the Danish National Broadcast. Furthermore, campaign material specifically designed for the initiative have been produced and distributed to all the involved organizations to ensure the local and regional consolidation of the national campaign.

"Learn more about ICT", through the establishment of a national network of ICT-teachers outside the established education system, thus guarantees citizens increased access to tailored ICT-training targeted their needs and interests and offered in a context known for them, as training courses are offered through and in the participating organisations, which also share each other's facilities and cooperate in other constructive ways. It is important to stress that the collaboration and activities within the network are and will be an ongoing process, not restricted to end in a given year.

The website www.060.es is the national portal for citizens and enterprises of Spain. A large number of online services is available regardless of the Public Administration responsible for it, so a citizen can apply for online services without having to know previously if it is from a local, regional or national Administration.

The 060 offices provide local, regional or national Administration services from a catalogue reflecting the agreements signed between the different Administrations in each spanish region, and are normally located in Town Councils, who provide the service.

The phone number 060 offers a 24h voice portal about common procedures and personalized information from 9 to 21 h Monday to Friday and from 9 to 14 h on Saturdays.

The VAPH aims to promote participation, integration and equal opportunities for the disabled in all areas of social life. Its ultimate goal is to help these people lead a better and more independent life. This by subsidising facilities and services to people with disabilities:

• Equipment and modifications: To better organise his or her daily life a disabled person is entitled to an allocation in order to cover the cost of a piece of equipment or modification to his or her home or car.
• Services and facilities: The VAPH subsidises services and facilities which provide care for disabled persons through day care or guidance.
• Personal assistance budget: Disabled persons who prefer to live at home can apply for a personal assistance budget. This budget can enable them to employ a home-helper.

When a disabled person is assigned a budget to employ a home-helper, he becomes an employer. Thus, he has to follow all rules of being an employer, like paying social security , getting an insurance etc. Moreover, he also has the legal duty to prove that a minimum of 95% of the assigned budget is used for the wage of the employee or the home-helper. He also has to declare the name and profile of the employee. In brief, the disabled person has to submit the same information to various institutions. The aim of the PAB project is to forward all the information that the disabled person has already submitted to another institution to the VAPH so there's no longer the need to submit the same information twice.

• Full, original version of this news article by OSOR.EU 
• ePractice news item “eGovernment Development Strategy 2009-2012 adopted” 
• Croatian Linux user group 
• Website of the Central State Administrative Office for e-Croatia (e-Hrvatska) 

The conference will cover eGovernment applications and a showcase of best practices from Turkey and other countries in the region in addition to presentations, panels, paper discussions and working groups. Delegates are expected to contribute to the outcomes of the conference through a high level of interaction and exchange of new ideas and practical experiences, which will eventually lead to a permanent network of regional eGovernment leaders.

Main topics to be discussed to the conference are:

• Challenges to eGovernment
• Knowledge Management
• Legal, Security and Trust Issues in eGovernment
• Measuring eGovernment
• eParticipation
• mGovernment

Deadline for abstract submission is 25 July 2009. Further information on the programme of the event is provided here.

The participants will include leaders, bureaucrats, technocrats, ICT representatives (regulatory bodies, NGOs, suppliers, etc.) and academicians. Participation from the regional countries are also encouraged. The number of participants to the event is expected to be around 300. Deadline for registration fee payment is 27 November 2009.

Event email: egov@todaie.gov.tr

• Government Transformation and eService provision: Personal Data Protection & eGovernment Interoperability, Information and Data Security, Future of customer-centric ICT-enabled services, eDemocracy & eParticipation.
• Digital Government & Business Ecosystem: Concepts, models and challenges, Vertical and horizontal integration of services, Economic and financial aspects, Evaluation and measurement of eGovernment, eProcurement, Semantic technologies.
• eJustice: Judicial decisions on-line (data protection/anonymization, accessibility, applications, uniform gateways, semantic search systems etc.), on-line publication of black-letter law, multi-jurisdictional systems, unification of search criteria and search terms, semantic systems etc., IT support of the judiciary, Legal aspects of eGovernment implementation.
• Public Sector Information: Implementation of Directive 2003/98/EC throughout Europe (experience, opinions, outlook), innovative PSI products & packages (business, geographic, meteorology, traffic, socio-economical, legal etc.; accessibility of PSI and its privacy issues, economic issues of PSI, problems and challenges of data holders, the end users’ view.

The number of the participants will be around 200. Registration to the event may be performed by filling the online form. The programme can be downloaded here. The registration fee is €130 (CZK 3 250). For those countries that joined the European Union after May 2004 and for non Member states the fee will be €85.

Event email: zalisova@epma.cz, pekarek@epma.cz The annual Eastern European eGov Days provide a solid platform for exchange of creative ideas and inspiring technology transfer between Western and Eastern European countries. The 7th EEEGOV Days will focus on the themes of eGovernment, the eBusiness Ecosystem and eJustice. Supplementing the Czech presidency of the European Union, the event is held under the auspices of the Czech Ministry of the Interior.

The event is organised in cooperation with a wide range of partners from: the national governments of Austria, Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Sweden; the regional government of Vysocina Region (CZ); civic partners such as the Vienna Core group (EU), the Judicial Academy (CZ) and the Respekt Institute (CZ); and business.

The event will support the European eGovernment Award 2009 which is administrated by CEPA Institue (AT), and promote the forthcoming Ministerial eGovernment conference 2009.

Expert and project communities will meet on April 22, the day before the official opening, on the occasion of side workshops supported by the organisers.High level Government Officials from 6 EU countries will speak in a plenary session together with 5 lead ICT visionarists and 3 representatives from the European Commission. 60 experts will speak in the parallell sessions.

Transformational Government enabled by ICT is becoming mainstream, having an impact on all aspects of eGovernance. The accepted papers will cover technological, socio-economic, organizational and political aspects, related to the eGovernment agenda and cross-topic issues, showing the integrated knowledge from different disciplines. The thematic sessions are as follows:

• Government Transformation and eService provision: Personal Data Protection & eGovernment Interoperability, Information and Data Security, Future of customer-centric ICT-enabled services, eDemocracy & eParticipation.
• Digital Government & Business Ecosystem: Concepts, models and challenges, Vertical and horizontal integration of services, Economic and financial aspects, Evaluation and measurement of eGovernment, eProcurement, Semantic technologies.
• eJustice: Judicial decisions on-line (data protection/anonymization, accessibility, applications, uniform gateways, semantic search systems etc.), on-line publication of black-letter law, multi-jurisdictional systems, unification of search criteria and search terms, semantic systems etc., IT support of the judiciary, Legal aspects of eGovernment implementation.
• Public Sector Information: Implementation of Directive 2003/98/EC throughout Europe (experience, opinions, outlook), innovative PSI products & packages (business, geographic, meteorology, traffic, socio-economical, legal etc.; accessibility of PSI and its privacy issues, economic issues of PSI, problems and challenges of data holders, the end users’ view.

The number of the participants will be around 200. Registration to the event may be performed by filling the online form. The programme can be downloaded here. The registration fee is €130 (CZK 3 250). For those countries that joined the European Union after May 2004 and for non Member states the fee will be €85.

Event email: zalisova@epma.cz, pekarek@epma.cz

• For what purposes is the UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification the right approach?
• What are the parameters to identify the right strategy?
• What other modelling methodology has been proven by practical implementations?
• How can we facilitate mutual support and fruitful exchange of solutions?

Besides sharing views on advantages and pitfalls of the different national and international methodological approaches, the event is meant to be a good networking opportunity for attendants from different countries.

Full details regarding the speakers and sessions can be found in the workshop’s agenda.

Attendance is free of charge. The application for participation is to be performed online by 22 January 2009. Applications of those who are already registered as users on the SEMIC.EU website will be considered in priority. Due to the limited number of seats, places will furthermore be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Event email: contact@semic.eu

• Applications of eGovernment;
• Challenges to eGovernment;
• The eVoting issue;
• eDemocracy;
• Measuring eGovernment/Economics of e-Government;
• Legal, agency, trust and governance issues in e-Government.

In addition to the main conference, submissions are welcomed to two mini tracks; one is the dedicated to ‘eTax & eRevenue Administration’, the other to ‘e-Justice’. The specific call for papers for this track can be found at http://www.academic-conferences.org/eceg/eceg2009/eceg09-minitrack.htm#eJustice.

Submissions are to be performed online by 8 December 2008.

Over 120 persons are expected to attend the conference. Registration is also to be performed online via http://academic-conferences.org/eceg/eceg2009/eceg09-registration.htm. The registration fees range from £199 (approx. €251) to £599 (approx. €755). Earlybird rates end on 20 April 2009.


Event email: info@academic-conferences.org

• Research theories and frameworks for public sector modernization with the support of ICT;
• Research methods, method integration and technique;
• Analysing and assessing contemporary research in eGovernment and eGovernance;
• Designing systems for the public sector: innovative cases and systems;
• Studying ICT usage, acceptance and performance of technology-supported public sector activities: methods and contemporary case analyses;
• Future directions in research and practice of ICT in the public sector;
• Innovation management, change management and complexity management in shaping public sector advancements;
• Transformation, customer-driven public sector reengineering and change management;
• Mass collaboration of stakeholders in government modernization: participative governance, simulation, animation, gaming and policy modeling;
• Customer-driven public sector reengineering;
• New ways of innovative developments: crowd sourcing, grid computing, social software etc;
• Economics, evaluation and stakeholders;
• Theories, concepts and solutions to deal with specific challenging topics in the application field: complexity, system dynamics, evolution, change management, mobile technologies, information preservation, trust and privacy, information management, ICT4D, information quality, adaptability and agility, integration and interoperation, systems and enterprise architecture, domain-specific social networking cases and solutions, semantic technologies, etc;
• Crises management, emergency and disaster response, public-private cooperation, transnational government;
• Education, training courses, and curricula.

The EGOV Conference Series is open to all and free of charge. It hosts four distinct formats of contributions: Scientific papers (distinguished between completed research and ongoing research); project presentations, and workshops. The conference also includes a PhD student colloquium providing doctoral students with an international forum for presenting their work, networking opportunities and cross-disciplinary inspiration.

Online submission is now open for EGOV 2009 contributions.

The deadline for completed research papers, ongoing research, project cases and papers on general issues has been extended to 15 March 2009.

Submissions of workshops, panels and PhD projects is open until15 April 2009.

Details about the submission guidelines , review criteria and deadlines are available on the event official website.

Moreover 2009, EGOV will be co-located for first time with ePart, the new International Conference on eParticipation, which will be dedicated to topics on eParticipation and eDemocracy. ePart will start right after EGOV, 3-4 September 2009 at the conference venue.

Event email: office@dexa.org

Event email: secretariat@IST-Africa.org

The conference will consist of keynote addresses, a plenary session, technical sessions and a panel discussion covering a wide range of topics in the eGovernment and eGovernance areas. It has been organised by and for an audience of leaders, bureaucrats, technocrats, researchers, practitioners and academic across the globe to present and discuss on their research findings and experiences in the field of the specific domain areas.

Registration is to be performed by filling out the dedicated form available at the event’s website. The conference fee is €70, which is payable in advance and should be received by December 19, 2008.

Event email: icegov@sobiad.org

This document is an attempt to describe, but not yet solve, the variety of issues and challenges faced by governments in their efforts to apply 21st century capabilities to eGovernment initiatives. Detail and useful examples of existing, applicable open Web standards are provided. Where government needs in the development of eGovernment services are not currently met by existing standards, those gaps are noted. This publication as an Interest Group Note represents the culmination of the first year of the W3C eGovernment Interest Group work.

Number of pages: 44