Each year GMIS International continues to foster its International partnerships in LOLA, the Linked Organizations of Local Authorities by attending the International LOLA conference, this year sponsored by our friends in the UK through SOCITM. 

This year’s conference was attended by three GMIS Members. Justin Heyman, GMIS International President, Jessica Middleton, Alabama GMIS, and me. This year’s meeting was quite busy, and very productive returning a great deal of value to GMIS International members. 

During the LOLA meetings we were able to hear updates from all our sister organizations, with much synergy around data collection, security, accreditation and measurement efforts being sponsored by each association. Several were undergoing web site updates and redesigns, and several were insourcing management of their organizations while others were going through outsourcing efforts. 

Eddy Van der Stock announced that LOLA has been awarded 80,000 Euros from the European Union to fund a training program focused on Open Data for the Public Sector, with materials due in May 2017 (waiting on Greece). This project will provide expanded benefit to GMIS International Members in free training as the program is developed. 

LOLA also discussed promoting a web site platform based on Ruby on Rails, which would become a hosting solution and platform for members to utilize for web hosting needs. Examples can be seen at lokeren.be. 

ALGIM, our sister association in New Zealand presented the ALGIM Linked Toolkit - which is a data integration platform which may be made available to other LOLA members as the product matures. 

Our friends from KOMMITS (Sweden) brought forward news that they had met with members of IAIS which is our equivalent organization in Japan! LOLA member voted to extend an invitation to IAIS to join our community, and would grow LOLA to nine member countries!! 

LOLA will also be rolling out an International Awards Program where member associations would feed annual awards into LOLA for consideration for the International LOLA awards. This is expected to debut during the LOLA conference hosted in Windsor, Canada during the MISA conference next June. For any GMIS members who may be interested in attending the MISA / LOLA conference please let me know and will be happy to provide additional information. 

The 2018 LOLA conference will be hosted by MAV (Municipal Association of Victoria, Australia), date to be announced, with the 2019 conference in Sweden. 

The LOLA website is about to get a refresh to include the following:

• Some practical way to get updates throughout the year.
• Updates from Each organization throughout the year.
• Login for the web sites – Everyone puts in data – Eddy sends out login to everyone.
• RSS Feeds from each organization web site (Language translated).
• SEO – and website re-design possibility.

A list of presentations from the conference can be found at: www.socitmconference.com/presentations. As always it was a pleasure representing GMIS International during the annual LOLA conference, strengthening bonds, and expanding the resources available to all our members.

Clark Rainer
GMIS International Director