Towards citizen-centred eGovernment in European cities and regions
In the framework of the Lisbon Agenda European cities and regions as key driving forces for regional economical development have made serious efforts to develop eGovernment. This is done to face the major demand and needs for improving openness, cost-efficiency and quality of the public administrations and provision of public services, thus contributing to the regional and national competitiveness. Nevertheless, more efforts and better collaboration are still needed to accelerate efficient uptake of eGovernment, dissemination and utilization of the achieved experiences and good practices. eCitizen II is designed to support European cities and regions in their joint efforts to accelerate eGovernment through exploiting established networks, gained experiences and good practices to improve interaction between citizens and public authorities, better involving citizens in local decision-making and contributing to change in operational culture and attitudes within public administrations.
As a follow-up project, eCitizen II brings added-value to interregional eGovernment cooperation focusing on sharing the accumulated knowledge, experiences, best practices, and transferring them between the more advanced and less experienced cities and regions throughout Europe. This cooperation aims at stimulating new approaches and understanding in city and regional administrations of engaging with citizens and developing citizen-centred eServices. The project will involve decision- and policy-makers, demonstrate benefits of the eGovernment and the best eParticipation practices in different public sectors and identify future prospects to ensure support to further acceleration of eGovernment.

The project activities are designed to enhance direct collaboration, peer learning, sharing and transfering of developed eGovernment and eParticipation tools as well as identifying future trends between project partners. Capacities and knowledge of decision- and policy-makers, officials, experts, information officers and other relevant actors in local and regional administrations on sharing and adopting accumulated experiences and good practices on eGovernment and eParticipation will be enhanced.  A Pan-European Best Practice Manual on eParticipation with recommendations for local and regional administrations will be developed to ensure dissemination and sustainability of the project results. 

This three-year project is lead by the Baltic Institute of Finland. The partnership consists of eleven public administrations, cities and regions represented by Tampere from Finland, Sheffield from UK, Odense from Denmark, Tartu from Estonia, Flevoland from the Netherlands, South West Regional Authority from Ireland, Bologna from Italy, Patras from Greece, Miskolc from Hungary, Vysocina from Czech Republic, EUDEL from Spain.