Brief Project Description

V4DIS is long running project that aims at promotion of new ways in eTourism and eGovernment and advances in both technologies and law framework. Through the number of presentations, speeches and discussion opportunities it reminds participating V4 administrators (politicians, decision makers as well as clerks) of the problems, lets them know what are threats and opportunities and shows innovative ways of eGov—utilization of digital services for visitors and tourists, Smart city concept, municipal portals and other digital means of contact with both visitors and citizens, embedded online services for these target groups—time reservation systems, online registrations and applications, actual live newsfeeds etc.

Digital world overtakes concept of boundaries, thus it is short-sighted to view these issues from national view only. Recipients of services are often from other countries. V4 countries also share similar problems, so they should info on good municipal projects and coordinate future approach.

Our project to enables networking and exchange of practices of active municipalities in V4 countries by inviting them to meet for a few days, to discuss together and to meet with experts in the field of digital presentations and digital services and modern, Smart municipality. Although the organizational schemes and distribution of power to municipalities is different to some extent in V4 countries, they still share similar historical background, act as a close knitted countries and have to face these problems together.

It focuses on the development and utilization of the digital services and smart administration in V4 municipalities in the area of eTourism. Whole civilization is going online while also the administrative burden of each citizen grows, due to more and more complex life and society.

It is only logical to enable citizens to solve their duties online, to search for relevant info online, to learn necessary things online—to be able to take advantage of the modern technologies and methods to make their life easier. And it is one of the duties of the municipality to be prepared and to present these possibilities to its visitors, be it tourists from abroad or domestics.

Being smart municipality brings along previously unseen opportunities to make everybody’s life in the city easier, be it digital administration, fluent traffic controls and info, or other complex system of services for tourists. In these years, and moreover in the close future, office or municipality can be hardly imagined without the online newsfeed and digital services for citizens and “outsiders” alike.

Demand for the online and eTourism arises from the owners of the premises and businesses, who wants to maximize the effectiveness of their enterprise and contact with visitors and also from tourists, who would like to get as much info and services before they start vacationing (and before they start spending). It is duty of good public body and administrators of its online presentations to outfit their municipality, otherwise it will stay behind very soon and risk significant economical loses.

Thus to connect partners from V4 makes sense and saves expensive discovering similar solutions separately for each country. Challenges are also similar in V4 countries and in open Europe, as workforce or property ownership or tourism is almost unlimited by borders and it is common for V4 regions to “share” some groups of citizens and for citizens to work in crossborder regions.