ONE Day Left to Lift off to Local eGovernment Online Consultation Aiming to ‘Make Malmo Real’ 4. November 2010 – 12:53 by Olga Lacigova - 21c

Brussels, November 2010 –The Flemish Government and a host of European local government partner organisations have launched an open online consultation to encourage local eGovernment practitioners across Europe to help identify practical solutions to combat working barriers to eGovernment at the local level such as bureaucratic red tape, cultural resistance and divergent privacy and data protection laws.

The objective of this effort is to produce a pan-European ‘Call to Action’ – known as The Citadel Statement – that will help local government deliver on the key objectives of the Malmo Ministerial Declaration by identifying the top things that national and EU decision makers can do by 2013 to better support local eGovernment. Initial research shows that despite numerous policy documents and ‘how to’ manuals on local eGovernment, nearly one year on the ‘Malmo Vision’ is still not being translated down to the on-the-ground, local level.

The online consultation will close on November 5.  Join in the consultation now and help ‘Make Malmo Real’ at the local government level: https://egovstatement.wordpress.com

The Citadel Statement will be formally launched at the Belgian Presidency’s forthcoming ‘Lift Off Towards Open Government’ Conference on December 15-16.   The Flemish Government invite practitioners from across Europe to the site of the old Ghent Citadel on December 14 – the perfect place to launch an ‘Ideal Cities Statement,’