Innovative Practices 2000

Information Systems and Technology

Dryanovo, June 27, 2000

Lyubomir Dimov

IT Consultant

No. 9/2000

One of the topical meetings of FLGR s Innovative Practices 2000 forum was held at the end of July close to the Dryanovo Monastery, with the kind assistance of the Municipality of Dryanovo. The meeting was on information systems and technology and attracted more than 45 participants. The attendees included representatives of municipalities, NGOs and private businesses dealing with local government IT and were from all over Bulgaria: Dryanovo and the region, Silistra, Razgrad, Botevgrad, Blagoevgrad, Stara Zagora and Yambol.

Following the warm greeting by Dryanovo s mayor, Mr. Miroslav Semov, facilitator Lyubomir Dimov from Varna and FLGR s Bogdana Shopova outlined the goals of the seminar and presented the topics that were to be discussed.

Several factors had prompted FLGR to organize such a meeting. Firstly, the successful practices implemented by many Bulgarian municipalities over the last year and the interest generated by the application of high technology for better and faster service delivery. Secondly, the formation of a team of innovative experts interested in sharing and interacting to apply successful models in local government. The meeting included demonstrations of some of the most interesting practices as well as technical advice on their implementation. The topics generated a lot of interest among the participants. The only thing that bothered the attendees was the limited time.

Mr. Nikolai Petrichev from the Municipality of Dryanovo presented the newly established citizen information in Dryanovo. He described the services offered to more than 14,000 citizens. On the average, more than 120 people visit the center daily. Of the three employees, at least two can be reached at any time during work hours. The staff provide information on municipal services, required documents and related fees. The shared experience of nearby Gabrovo s establishment of a similar center was invaluable for the development of the Dryanovo citizen information center.

Municipality of Elena s mayor, Mr. Dilyan Mluzev, presented an initiative from his area. A local newspaper, The Elena Tribune, was established and has been self-sustainable for 40 years. The newspaper publishes Municipal Council decisions, informs about municipal initiatives, bids, decisions and ordinances. In a municipality with a 14,000 population, the newspaper is published twice a month in a 2,000 circulation and has subscribers outside of the municipality.

Mr. Lyubomir Dimov presented the major elements of IT as a means of optimizing the functioning of municipal administrations. He gave examples with the information system adopted by the Municipality of Varna. Varna s system includes computers, active communication equipment, LANs in the municipality, the areas and in other organizations (police, notary public, tax administration, the water and sewer company, etc.) Furthermore, it has the ability to provide services to citizens, such as parcel inventories, licenses, health insurance. The participants were especially interested in the remote communication system, in use in the municipality since 1998. It is an unique system that so far exists only in Varna. It unifies the computers located in the administrative buildings in the municipality and in the areas, thus providing a common working environment and central server services, such as bookkeeping, citizen status registry and Internet access. The system represents the world trends in communication services. An additional advantage is that the system is of the switch on-and-forget type, i.e. it doesn t require continuos maintenance. The connection is extremely fast and stable. The territorial coverage allows the current 3 Mbit/s transfer speed to be increased significantly if necessary. However, due to the client/server services and the Internet speed, such an increase would not be necessary over the next one or two years.

Mr. Ilian Nikolov of Razgrad s Center for Economic Development presented a model for successful municipal marketing and promotion. All participants followed carefully the demonstration and their questions showed that they have embraced the method and would apply it as soon as possible.

Mr. Alexander Kashumov of the Access to Information Program presented the major aspects of the newly adopted Access to Information Act and the obligations assigned to the municipalities and the organizations under the Act. Given the current condition of many municipalities, it would be difficult for them to meet the requirements imposed by the Act. If adequate measures are not taken immediately, most of the municipalities would be unable to meet the legislative requirements. This presentation and the problems it dealt with generated a lot of commentaries and clarifications that continued during the break and became one of the work group discussion topics. The consensus was that the better equipped a municipality is, the better it would meet its responsibilities arising from this legislative act.

After the break, Mr. Lyubomir Dimov demonstrated some aspects of municipal GIS. Albeit relatively new to Bulgaria, this technology is quickly being applied by municipalities such as Sofia, Blagoevgrad, Bourgas and Varna. Using different methods, these municipalities implement the GIS principles and automate many of the activities related to the services delivered by their directorates on architecture and public works, information systems and technology, property and economy. The analyses support the effective management decisions, save citizens time and open up the municipalities to successful investment by means of precise investment plans. Then followed a discussion on the difficulties associated with the implementation of GIS, the possible problems in the start-up period, the pooling of information and human resources to solve problems, the ways to increase data precision and to minimize costs.

There were three demonstrations on the use of Internet by municipalities and NGOs. The demonstrations included the web-sites of the Foundation for Local Government Reform, Municipality of Varna and Municipality of Blagoevgrad. The demonstrations made a distinction between the groups that are targeted by the individual web-sites. FLGR s site provides assistance to municipalities, organizations and experts and a place to share ideas. Municipality of Varna s site is a means for service delivery, for dissemination of local legislation, for getting information on phone numbers, services

and departments, as well as on bids and announcements. And finally, Municipality of Blagoevgrad s site is aimed at convincing potential investors to relocate to the region. The participants had an opportunity to find the strengths and the weaknesses of these three approaches and to develop their vision about their municipality s business card. However, they all agreed that the electronic delivery of services is inevitable and that the municipal administrations activities won t be the exception from the rule for too long.

The discussion group reviewed the presented innovations implemented by the municipalities. The focus was on the role of citizen information centers, how they can be made more effective and what hinders a municipality to be maximally transparent to its citizens and to provide the most effective services. The consensus was that citizen information centers must be established, despite the internal resistance on behalf of municipal managers and employees. However, there are many objective obstacles that prevent an information center from becoming a service center. The most common ones include: lack of electronic databases; lack of sufficiently qualified staff; the technology is related to active legislation and is difficult to implement; lack of free resources, including funding and companies that are able to develop and maintain systems and data. When the municipalities accept that the services they provide to their citizens are a priority, the establishment of public-private partnerships will become a standard practice and the municipal monopoly in public services will disappear. The strict civic control and the lack of tolerance for low quality and slow services will be the factors that would change citizens image of the conservative, uninterested and corrupt municipal employees. The citizen information centers are one of the tools that would make that happen. In many cases, the Administrative Services to Physical and Legal Entities Act has speeded this process.

The meeting could go on but the time was out. In conclusion, the participants agreed that this would be the first of a series of regular meetings of experts and managers. They proposed to establish an association of local government IT experts.