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Most of the participants in the workshops on inclusive e-government that took place in the capitals of six Western Balkan countries, considered that their countries have established very few mechanisms for e-inclusion and interoperability, even though the interest in e-Government development is high.

The workshops took place within the framework of the project "Western Balkans Network for Inclusive e-Government" and were meant to present the draft research on the levels of sophistication and inclusiveness of e-gov services conducted by project partners using the EU-level Capgemini methodology, with a goal to develop Regional eGovernment Roadmap to facilitate joint efforts by the countries aspiring to soon join the EU.

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The conference on the topic of "Inclusive e-Government" was organized by the Metamorphosis Foundation last week within the frames of the project "Western Balkans Network for Inclusive e-Government". The project aims at strengthening the cooperation and coordination among all the relevant stakeholders, decision-makers, government representatives, as well as representatives of the business, academic and nongovernmental sector in order to improve the quality and raise the level of usability and accessibility of electronic services provided by the public administration.

"Although the inclusion is characteristic for the countries with a more advanced degree of development of the information society, this does not

EDRI-member ISOC Bulgaria has published an overview of activities in 2004. From a strong focus on free and open source software, they initiated an important project to use FOSS on the municipal level. The project is steered by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to help municipal governments in South-eastern Europe use the Internet to better respond to citizens' needs. Bulgaria is the first region to use FOSS applications to enhance government transparency and people's access to municipal services. After Bulgaria, the program will expand to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro.

The mayor of Kardjali, the first pilot municipality in Bulgaria, expressed his appreciation for ISOC-BG publicly, in front of the President of the Republic, for the successful efforts to train and increase computer literacy of the employees and to provide grant free e-government solutions. ISOC-BG also began to work on preliminary criteria for the development of a FOSS based on-line documentation system for municipal administrations.

The Council of Europe has adopted a recommendation on e-governance on 15 December 2004. The Council recommends that member states "Work together with the appropriate international, national, regional and local stakeholders, to develop a shared vision of e-governance that upholds human rights, democracy and the rule of law." Member states should use e-governance to strengthen democratic institutions at all levels and make them more accessible, transparent, accountable and responsive. E-governance is not one-sided, but should provide opportunities for all to participate in the process of decision-making. Finally member states should use information and communication technologies to "improve public administration and services by making them more accessible, user-centred, transparent,

"We are currently renegotiating the open society", Gus Hosein from Privacy International stated at a conference on E-government and the protection of personal data in the Danish Parliament on Tuesday 7 September.

The vision of the Danish e-government initiative is one in which personal data are increasingly floating across traditional institutional borders, without paying much attention to the privacy challenges this raises. The conference addressed a number of data protection challenges related to e-government such as re-use of data, data retention, rights of access, and technical solutions such as digital signatures and PET. Considering the large amount of data already being stored about citizens in Denmark, and the proposed mandatory one year data retention scheme (not yet in force), several interventions stated it is crucial that privacy safeguards are enforced and that citizens become more privacy conscious.

The online presence of Romanian MPs is still not very strong. According to a survey published by the Romanian eDemocracy group, the websites of the 2 chambers only present information and ignore bi-directional communication with citizens. In the absence of any interactive services, e-mail is the most important means of communication. But only 27% of the 485 Romanian MPs have a publicly available e-mail address. On average, the minimum in the 'old' EU member states is 46%.

32 of the 42 counties represented in the Senate don't have any senator with an e-mail address. Nevertheless, even if some MPs have an e-mail address, this doesn't guarantee their dialogue with the citizen: only 9% of the inquiries sent via e-mail receive an answer.

In a previous e-mail response study, conducted between 1 October and 30 November 2003, the percentage of e-mail addresses was 25%, with a similar small chance for citizens to get a reply (See EDRI-gram 2.6).

During the international conference in Kiev 'Freedom of Information, Transparency, E-governance: Civic Society View' on 15 June 2004 the first Awards for E-Openness in the Ukraine were presented to 4 city councils. The aim of the Award is to demonstrate best practices of local authorities in interaction via official web sites. The Award is called a 'Crystal Dog', shaped as an e-mail @ sign on top of a glass cylinder, a name-pun on the sign called 'dog' in popular Ukrainian.

The Crystal Dogs were presented to the Kharkiv City Council, for setting the best example in online access to official documents and financial transparency and to the Kramatorsk City Council for dealing with petitions. A third award was presented to the Lubotin Town Council for the best practice amongst small towns of online deliberations and a final award to the Solomensky District Council of Kiev City for it's openness in interaction with users.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Internet Society of Bulgaria (ISOC-Bulgaria) have launched a project to stimulate the use of free/open source software for e-government projects.

The project aims to help municipal governments in South-eastern Europe to use free/open source software applications to enhance government transparency and people’s access to municipal services. Initially launched in Bulgaria, the project will soon expand to include Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro.

Under this project, which will last 18 months in its first phase, several Balkan cities will benefit from the creation of e-municipalities. The city of Kurdjali, which serves as a pilot, requested the support of UNDP and ISOC–Bulgaria to help enhance citizens’ access to services and information resources and reduce the cost of the access tools that are required to be part of the global networked economy.