Iperbole/Internet Civic Network Project/Service
Started in January 1995, (now basically implemented, but we are continuously developping on it new functionalities and services) the Iperbole Service concerns the creation of a free-of-charge "civic network" on Internet, as a "necessary" measure - among others - to implement teledemocracy and participation through telematics, as the accomplishment of new forms of learning and communication. Being a civic network it is aimed at all Bologna citizens, associations, schools, other public administrations and SMEs at a metropolitan level. The Municipality offers free of charge the e-mail service, news, direct access to the municipal www (http://www.comune.bologna.it/ connected to other local, national and european servers), free full-Internet connections and to its free resources to all citizens requesting it. Full Internet with a small charge has been made available to local companies and citizens. Full Internet free of charge ( promotional initiative) has been offered to the economic associations and other organisations relevant for the area productive area. This is to be meant as a real "new right of citizenship", also in an economic sense, that must be guaranteed and supported by the "Public Authority": in other words, a "public door" to global connectivity.
The Public Local Network - connected to the world network - thus becomes a means of spreading generally useful information and services; of a two-way communication between the Administration and society (free e-mail and news groups: local ones are more than 35 on different subjects as traffic, urban planning, transports, social problems, culture, environments, etc.) and among citizens themselves (e-mail/news groups); a way of listening to and gathering needs/suggestions/proposals/requests, concerning transparency and participation to decision-making processes, and electronic democracy.
Further, it characterizes itself as the experimenting of an advanced system of service distribution and control of their quality, of simplification of burocratic procedures, of feedback monitoring and consequent analysis, of spreading and exchange of knowledge, of releasing resources at this level, thus reinforcing the competitivity and the dynamics of the economic-productive tissue.
The Iperbole/Internet service is based on the principles ....
Furthermore, innovative and efficient communication systems - both actual and "virtual" - are definitely a basic element of desirability, attractiveness and quality of life for a city, in particular for an urban area - like Bologna - that has a metropolitan vocation.
Bologna municipal administration holds that local authorities should possess a primary function - a leading role, not a secondary one to the market - both in the creation and in the enhancing of conditions - even infrastructural ones (metropolitan area networks) - related to transferring knowledge, either an individual one or as processed by groups of interest at any level, into the creation of the information society. Through the experimenting of interactive and direct channels between the citizens and the local authority, the administration reaches people at home, at work, within the firms, in the office, at the school, in places of public consultation.Inner (inside the Municipality) energies are thus set in motion and resources are optimized in favor of the citizen/client/tax-payer.
Moreover, the "metropolitan civic network" is a spontaneous factor of social telematics awarness multiplication, a tool for expanding, shaping, promoting the critical mass in the use of technologies that are proper of the information society. In this way, it contributes to oppose, by means of concrete actions, elitisms of any kind and consequent social discriminations, new and different forms of illiteracy, creating, at the same time, new professionalisms, markets and products, employment, and spreading telejobs, know-how transferring, telelearning, etc.
According to the principles underlying the Iperbole/Internet project, access to the means of communication and their active use represents a tool of economic and cultural development, a right to be exercised by all citizens (universal service).
Further, it is mandatory that such a complex organization as a large municipality, should test all the means, even the most technologically advanced ones, to oppose the "entropic" tendency, that is typical of public administrations and in general complex organisations. A wider social knowledge would thus be acquired and results would be achieved that are coherent to the expectations of the community: employing the resources at their best, accelerating the procedures, making the managing and political responsibilities transparent and clear, acquiring inputs in order to plan collectively, looking for a consensus for made and still-to-make choices.
In order to reach this strategic end Bologna City Council has activated a specific service - IPERBOLE service - investing considerable economic, technological, professional resources - even establishing connections with other external bodies (public and private) both as users and information providers. This way of connection, of integration and of reciprocal visibility can easily be extended to a European level (and even worldwide). We intend consider beside the hierarchic model (TV) - with a strong central point and an imposed semantic - with a distributed model, having local, partially spontaneous and creative semantics, in which the construction of the system is the result of the different contributions of the collectivity.
Acquiring the habit of using communication for civil and democratic aims can be the best way to fight any possible telematic oligotechnocracy and to enlarge the critical mass.
One of the main goals of the project is the user friendlyness: with the use of virtual map metaphor in describing the places/functions related to the information stored into the "electronic archive", the increasing amount of the information available in engligh too, the exploitation of the multimedial potentialities, we are building a service not only of local/national interest but also easy to reach and access by everywhere
Since the system is addressed to the whole population of the City of Bologna and its metropolitan area (48 municipalities already been connected), a lot of efforts has been done to realise the simpliest interfaces on a very complex underneath structure of data. Great efforts have also been done on the maintenance side of the system since this task is addressed to Public Administration officers not necessarily skilled with computer programming.
For that political and strategic approach to the development of the Information Society in a sustainable environment Iperbole "civic network" has been awarded with "BANGEMANN CHALLENGE" prize for the most innovative european project in Public Adminstration Sector (Stockholm 22/1/97). Other important international acknowledgements are EURO-MED NET AWARD ‘98 for the web site, the official selection for EXPO 2000 into the section PROJECTS ALL OVER THE WORLD, and the presence of a chapter about Iperbole in the "Governmento On Line" White Paper.
Some figures about Iperbole at 30 June1998
13.229 individual users - 602 collective subjects - private, public, no-profit - 60 schools are connected also as information providers, 127 Public Administration and public imterest services - 242 municipal offices connected (152 conncted via Iperbole, 90 connected via Intranet (Lotus Notes System, 1750 employees connected and 1000 employees already trained); 17.209 files of information, more than 13.000 telematic visitors every day.
After three years and half of activity: 212.900 phone calls (about 280/300 calls every day), 28.550 demo, 79.800 technical assistance contacts (at desk, via telephone/fax/e-mail), 33.550 technical information kit (manuals), 23.960 diskettes distributed (connection and html software), 26.850 general information kit, 57.000 dépliants, 60.500 e-mail received and 38.660 sent, about 25.000 questionnaires filled by users and processed, more than 1000 consultancies given on the experience to other P.A., agencies and research centres.
Bologna's "telematic visitors" are about 13000 per day: 60% of them are Italians, 30% Europeans, 10% are from the rest of the world, mainly from the United States.
Key-factors
With the IPERBOLE/INTERNET "civic network" the Municipality is partner in some European Projects that are developing applications/extensions of the system in the fields of : tourism, telelearning, teleconferencing, telebooking, joint editing on internet, etc., information and services delivery. Also we are now realising a citizens/traveller-oriented system for developing the tourist potential of European cities by providing communications-based services and by giving visibility to the touristic/cultural offer. The project assumes as a starting point the phenomenon of civic networking, in progress in several cities in the EU and aims at building a system which makes possible to pass from giving civic information for free to the citizens to giving services for payment to the consumers.
In fact the development of free of charge civic networking, and of the so called 'free nets' has been the evolution, during the last three years, of the BBSs in the exploding Internet environment. This first phase has been a very important phenomenon, from the social standpoint too. Such a process has mainly aimed at disseminating the Internet basic tools, such as the use of personal e-mail, information access through browsers, software downloading from the net. The overall effect - in Bologna as well as in other european cities - has been a widespread growth of technical education, a better dialogue between citizens and public administrations and often the feeling of belonging to a 'virtual community'. On another side, both local authorities and profit and non profit organisations began to promote the local areas by means of tourism and culture oriented web sites. Starting from the above scenario, we are convinced that we are now at the beginning of a natural second phase, that is to say the forecoming evolution of civic nets, especially the ones which officially represent local public authorities in the European Union. The next point (in particular for Bologna free of charge civic network - more than 15.000 end users - will be to pass from building a electronic community and giving information to providing real "added value" contents, it is to say providing interactive and quite complex services as the transactions: business to administration, citizen to administration, administration to administration, business to business transactions. Some services to be delivered via Iperbole/Internet already planned and that will be tested in the next months are: certificates, licences, booking, payments, authorizations, etc. The basic contitions in order to let the users feel confident and trust the system is to add to the basic tools of the official web-site of a city features like certification, authentication, signature/integrity, encoding and encryption. Our network has been selected by the Central Organisation appointed (AIPA and the Ministry) as the first platform for the official national "pilot" application in the field of CERTIFICATION AUTHORITY and digital signature tested on real public transactions/services.
SOME EXAMPLES:
-THE TIME BANK AND THE ETHICAL COMMERCE ORIENTED SYSTEM FOR CITIZENS AND THE SO CALLED "THIRD SECTOR" (NON PROFIT ECONOMY7: a telematic system to re-estabilish, strenghten social realtionships and solidarity structure, and to cope - in a certain way - with the unemployement problems. In this environment the Internet technology applied to the local civic networks and communities seem to be the ideal space to find/exchange this kind of services whose range and "customisation" is always increasing.
- THE METROPOLITAN VIRTUAL DISTRICT: a virtual industrial district integrated with the Iperbole metropolitan network wich represent both the civic society/community and the productive tissue.
- THE UNIQUE VIRTUAL DESK: INTEGRATED SERVICES AND CROSS TRANSACTION BETWEEN DIFFERENT PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS AND DIFFERENT TYPE OF END-USERS/CUSTOMERS: an integrated set of "added value" services (transactions) that imply the interaction between citizens, professionals, enterprises and Municipality, and between Public Administrations, delivered in a safe, protected, certified way by the system (The system will be compliant with the international and national accepted technological standards in the field (public and privat key, certification authority/ies, SET, SSL, encription with the 1024/2048 algoritms, etc.)
- TELEMATIC SERVICES FOR ELDERLY PEOPLE ON THE NET: a system that aims:
1)set up a customised online service for the elderly;
2) support (and possibly stimulate the formation of) organisations for elderly people interested in information technology and the Internet;
3) investigate the special needs of elderly people in using CMC and IT;
4) select technology of special value for elderly people;
5) develop, demonstrate and use methods to teach elderly people about the exploitation of CMC and IT;
6) develop Internet-based tools for communication with and between elderly people, based on existing Internet standards, World Wide Web, e-mail and the groupware systems
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