WHAT ARE CIVIC NETWORKS?

A Civic Network is an on line environment designed to promote and favour communication, cooperation and exchange of services among citizens and all public and private members (non-profit organizations, governmental institutions, and companies) of a local community, opening at the same time the local community to the network communication with the other parts of the world.

A civic network so guarantees the right of on-line citizenship to all, and it is characterized by the following features:

• Conferences are based on contributions from participants.
• Bidirectional communication, not only broadcasting
• User friendliness and training initiatives to guarantee access to everyone
• Inexpensiveness (inexpensive hardware and free of charge software or public access points)
• Sharing of rules and principles (netiquette) to preserve rights of all citizens, especially weakest people, starting with younger.
• Reciprocal identification of users (i.e., no one is anonymous, but for particularly forums).

This features are inspired directly by the North American experiences known

• community/free nets("citizens" networks)
• civic networks (government-promoted networks)
• city nets (networks in which the city exhibits itself to the world)

Instead of seeing these as alternative and competing experiences, we think that they are different dimensions a network centered around a town or a geographical area needs to addrees; its growth can be figured as a path to maximize each of the three components in a well balanced way.

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Last updated for this web page, January, 1998. For further information on this web page, please contact to epitelio@eurosur.org