Commune di PratoItalyCommune di Prato WebsiteProject is done in conjunction with the assessment of potential deployers, which will validate the used methodology and act as quality control during the different phases of the deployment. This group will be involved in the different steps of the deployment and the milestones of the project. We have potential deployers from Italy, Belgium (Brussels and Flanders), Hungary, Bulgaria, and intend to add Malta. About Comune di PratoPrato is an urban community in Tuscany with a total of 280,000 inhabitants, including in its Province. The population of the province area in mainly concentrated in the Prato City area and has around 180,000 inhabitants. In Tuscany, as well as in Italy, Prato is a leading municipality in the decentralisation of procedures. Prato has been, and continues to be, very active in Information Technology for many years. Its internal network is capable of connecting 1,300 workstations in 25 buildings spread throughout the city area. To build this city network infrastructure it has established an optic fibre backbone in the town centre, able to provide high-speed connection between different offices of the municipality on the one hand and the prefecture and province on the other. Since 1989, it has provided certification and information services to text-based kiosks. In 1996, the City of Prato began providing information to the public through the Internet, involving other municipalities and other parts of the public sector. This activity, called Civic Network, yielded the promotion of the PO-NET project, signed by the public sector in Prato province, aiming at:
Since introducing the PO-NET local project, the Prato Municipality has promoted and taken part in several subprojects partially or totally funded by external institutions, among them: the European Commission, the Italian Government and the Tuscany Region Government. Below is a complete list of Prato participated projects in the areas related to the scope of this proposal:
In parallel with some of the previously mentioned projects, Prato Municipality took part of many other projects in the area of innovation using IT, promoted by the regional government. These projects involved such fields as:
More recently Prato City Council participated successfully in the second call of the National eGov initiative, both in the eDemocracy theme (“Bit Generation” project), and in the experimentation of digital terrestrial TV (T-Democracy). All the previously mentioned projects have aimed to promote the adoption of emerging technologies in the day-by-day life in the city. Prato was one of the winners of EU “eGovernment Label” at the last “From Policy to Practise” Ministerial Conference (Bruxelles 2001). Recently the municipality has been involved in different activities concerning the diffusion of the Electronic Identity Card. In the last 10 years the IT department of the municipality has implemented in the city centre area a fibre optic infrastructure that links all the main municipality buildings. More recently a local utility held by the municipality started cabling the entire province and offering broadband services to citizens and enterprises. The final result of these operations in the field of emerging technology adoption is a very well developed set of on-line services offered to the city by many local institutions and strong cooperation established among the IT infrastructure belonging to different actors in the city area. RepresentativeMs Gabriella Martinelli LocationVia Cairoli, 16 |