General Description
The city of Barcelona with more than 4 million inhabitants in the metropolitan area is the political, economic and cultural capital of Catalonia and the fifth largest industrial agglomeration in Europe. The city and its surrounding area act as a centre of economic activities related to new technologies and advanced services in the framework of the information society. The Institut Municipal d‘Informàtica (Municipal Institute of Information Technologies) is an autonomous entity belonging to the Barcelona City Council with more than 200 professionals working in it. It is devoted to provide ICT solutions and to promote the ICT innovation development in the entire municipality. Besides, IMI is the entity responsible for eGovernment strategy of the city from the decision upon the launching of new public services and the internal reengineering processes. The institute is also in charge of the entire base information of the city (statistics, registry, city map).
Relevant Competence for the project
The municipality believes that eGovernment is the main tool to transform public administration and putting citizens at the centre. The IRIS project launched in 2006 was an outstanding step towards improving general public services. IRIS main axe a multichannel tool for citizens to send information, suggestions, requests or complaints about their main worries: street cleaning, road signs, public transport, insecurity, etc. The IRIS service receives around 300.000 contacts yearly, being one of the most important sources of citizens‘ information. The municipality’s background in European projects is wide, having taken part in projects such as Gala, Dali, Exe, GAUDI, Eurociti, Permis, Elda, Ambar, Petri CoCo, Infocities, Sipac, Infopime, Medipolis, OntoGov, OpenCity, ICING, HOPS or FIREBALL.
Main role and activities to be carried out
Barcelona will share the experience of IRIS and contribute to the guidance of the general Pilot on citizens’ participation. Barcelona will also act as a second city for the Citizens participation Pilot that will start in Helsinki. Barcelona Pilot will rely in opening IRIS interfaces and raising citizens’ awareness to promote third party development of new front-end applications.
Contact Details