C.A.R.M.EN - CARMEN project prominent in Prato eGovernance workshop

CARMEN, to which e-Forum contributes as a communication partner, was one of three projects featured during a special event on citizen advanced relationship management and setting processes for electronic signatures, which took place in Prato, Italy, on 5 March 2007.

CARMEN - Citizens’ Advanced Relationship ManagemENt - is supported by the European Commission’s eTEN programme. It’s role is to validate in an eGovernment environment a number of customer relationship management (CRM) modules developed by Italian firm Ancitel. The modules are being tested in a number of applications in the municipalities of Saarbrucken (Germany), Prato (Italy) and Sheffield and the Black Country (UK). For background information about CARMEN, click here.

During the workshop, the progress made by CARMEN was outlined by Alastair Burt of the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Serena Andriani of LABS, and Paolo Boscolo of the city of Prato. Alastair Burt discussed the findings presented in the CARMEN white paper on the development of Citizen Interaction Platforms. The white paper is detailed in the March 2007 CARMEN newsletter, which can be obtained by clicking here.

Serena Andriani talked about the steps taken by CARMEN so far. It has looked at citizen relationship management in Germany, Italy and the UK, and has carried out a live implementation of a number of CRM modules. She noted that the project will build on this by developing a deployment and business plan. After the close of the project, CARMEN plans to offer CRM services and related consultancy to local authorities.

Paolo Boscolo presented some examples of CARMEN applications tested in Prato. These include automatic notifications by SMS when city parking permits are due for renewal, traffic information notifications, and a public information broadcasting system via monitors set up in different places in Prato.

The CARMEN-related presentations were followed up by details of projects and initiatives from other parts of Europe, including:
- The Unox1 project from the city of Modena, Italy (presented by Claudio Forghieiri)
- The Mobile Adaptive Procedures (MAP) project (presented by Fabio Perossini)
- USL 4 Health, presented by Eugenio Ruggieri
- Digital signatures in the EU and the Leuven report - presented by Shaun Topham of Sheffield City Council (UK), who is also involved in CARMEN

The event was also attended by Juan Gonzalez of the European Commission, who gave an outline of the Commission’s Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP), which will replace to a large extent current eGovernment funding instruments.

Gonzalez said that information society is the third strand of the CIP. The ICT Policy Support Programme has a funding envelope of EUR 730 million, of which the largest part will go to eGovernment. The objective is to support large pilot projects (EUR 5-10 million), especially dealing with interoperability. For 2007, Gonzalez said, the Commission is looking at supporting eProcurement and eID pilot projects, which should involve six to ten EU states. On eID, the Commission could only support interoperability aspects - member states already have eID strategies. In general support would be targeted in areas where there is market failure, he said.

In addition smaller scale pilot and market validation projects with budgets of EUR 2-3 million will be supported, as will thematic networks, such as on eParticipation. Gonzalez said that the CIP work programme should be adopted in April 2007, with the first calls in May. Evaluation of project proposals would then take place over the summer, with contractual negotiations at the end of 2007, and the first projects to start in 2008.

More information about CIP can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/enterprise_policy/cip/index_en.htm

The website of the CARMEN project is at http://www.carmenproject.org/