Today the LOLA representatives  Arend van Beek and Eddy Van der Stock visited in Brussels the the Cabinet of Ms Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for the Digital Agenda for Europe, to have a meeting with the Head of the Cabinet HRH Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands. 

On the agenda was LOLA and the possible projects on Open Standards and Open Processes in the future ...

The Linked Organisation of Local Authority ICT Societies “LOLA” represents the local government information managers.  LOLA provides a forum for local government agencies to exchange IT best practices that enhance the delivery of government services.  Our international affiliations ensure a global perspective that enables diversity of opinions and experiences. Our membership includes ICT- and   GIS-professionals.  Our international affiliates come from USA, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

LOLA is in the domain of e-Government leading in the sense that several initiatives of its members have found its way to all municipalities.  Examples are the work of the Flemish Organization for ICT in Local Government on Open Standards for Local Authorities (OSLO – ISA Joinup EU Commission<https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/catalogue/asset_release/oslo-open-standards-local-administrations-flanders-version-10>). The OSLO specification is the result of a public-private partnership initiated by V-ICT-OR, the Flemish Organization for ICT in Local Government, and funded by Flemish ICT service providers. Started in February 2012, the project facilitates a working group with ICT experts from local, regional and federal public administrations and ICT service providers to build a consensus on standards for information exchange.

OSLO aims to transform IT-service delivery efforts in some fundamental ways to focus on our Customers: citizens and business enterprises. This Strategy focuses the Government’s energy on the use of technology to transform the delivery of Governmentservices so that citizens and business only have to Ask Just Once to get what they need from their Government. The OSLO Vocabulary is a simplified, reusable and extensible data model that captures the fundamental characteristics of information exchanged by public administration in the domains: contact information, localisation and public services.

The standards of the Flemish OSLO project are local extensions of the core Person, Business, Location, and Public Service vocabularies created at European level in the context of the ISA Programme (Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations) of the European Union. These four core vocabularies are simplified, reusable, and extensible specifications for information exchange.

Presentation Semantic Interoperability Community 2013, Dublin: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/06%20-%20Raf%20Buyle%20-%20SEMIC%202013.pdf

LOGIX Institute (LOcal eGov Innovation and eXpertise Institute): Citizens and businesses – the customers of local governments – are digitising rapidly. They wish to communicate with the government in a modern and digital way, 24/7, just like they are used to interact with other segments of society. Governments are expected to use public funds efficiently and effectively. In the current climate of decreasing government revenues, this expectation becomes a necessity. The ICT and information management landscape for local governments are undergoing major evolutions. ICT platforms on the local government level are however currently largely disparate, silo-based islands that have been deployed by a variety of software vendors over the years. The field is ready for disruption.

The aim is to start-up an expertise centre in Europe, the LOGIX Institute (LOcal eGov Innovation and eXpertise Institute). LOGIX is dealing with-government innovation that follows fundamental research developments in this field closely and translates them for the (local) governments in Europe into concrete, feasible and precompetitive innovation projects.

LOGIX consists of tree strategic domains:

 *   Living Lab (Innovation)
 *   Expertise Centre (Advice)
 *   Operational Platform (Engagement)