Finished Projects

eBZ

In 1999 with the eEurope initiative the European Commission recognized the central role of e-government in order to bring the benefits of the Information Society to all European citizens. In the following years e-government action plans have been elaborated and lauched at the European, national, and local level.

In 2002 the City of Bozen-Bolzano in collaboration with the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Faculty of Computer Science, started the eBZ - Digital City initiative with the overall objective to promote the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the local administration. Several activities have been carried out: participation in national and European projects, organization of conferences/workshops, hosting of students for thesis/internships, etc. Such activities also reflect the specific committment of the city towards e-government.

The eBZ-2015 aims to strengthen the direction that has been started with eBZ - Digital City and to recognize the strategic role of ICT in the ongoing changes of the municipal administration. This is also in line with the Strategic Development Plan of the city, where a excellence in administration emerged as one of the focus points for the next years. The eBZ 2015 initiative concentrates on the following five strategic areas: Public Online Services and Front-Office, Internal Organization and Back-Office, Security, E-Democracy.

eMayor

Municipalities are the government organizations with which citizens interact most frequently. Documents and services released by municipalities to citizens impose all security requirements: confidentiality, authentication of data and user, integrity, and non-repudiation. The overall objective of eMayor was to develop and implement an open, secure, and affordable e-Government platform for small and medium European public organizations in order to

• support the secure communication of municipalities amongst themselves, businesses and citizens;
• secure remote access and storage to repositories of municipal information for authorized civil servants and citizens; and
• support pan European services enhancing their role, visibility and mission.

This project contributed towards the provision of secure and interoperable e-Government services accross different member states of Europe. To be successful, the eMayor was designed to be simple, open, and followed widely accepted standards with good market support. The platform was based on Internet and enabled communication with legacy and newley developed systems via Web Services.