CONGRESS OF LOCAL AND REGIONAL AUTHORITIES OF EUROPE
  CONGRES DES POUVOIRS LOCAUX ET REGIONAUX DE L'EUROPE
 
 
 Strasbourg, 8 January 1998
CONF/HELSINKI (98) 4
 
 
 European Seminar
on
 
"LOCAL AND REGIONAL INFORMATION SOCIETY"
 
 
 
Helsinki, Finland
21-23 January 1998
 
________________
 
 
Experiences of Local and Regional Information Society Projects
How to create new public services? How to reform public administration?
 
Report by
Mr Kaisa Jokela
Municipality of Halsua, Finland

Regional automation in Kaustinen region
 
Municipalities in Kaustinen region develop their municipal services by automating their tasks whenever it is possible.

Since every small municipality must offer same services to their inhabitants and costs are growing continuously  So the municipalities of Kaustinen region have decided to combine their resources and have implemented some special arrangements within their administration. We in Kaustinen region believe that new technology will help us in our work.
We have built a network which connects our seven municipalities to one local network .

At  the same time we have taught our inhabitants to use information networks and services in our rural computer centers.  Now 13 % of the inhabitants use a common E-mail service.  Also WWW-services are available to everyone.
We have developed a computer program for common administration. The program have intranet and extranet services. The Information which is meant to public is transferred automatically to WWW-pages. The Program is very efficient especially in project management. New features  will be added to the program when it is necessary. Each municipality may use the same program in their own administration.

Although this program is the base to cooperation and offers significant help to the flexible service production, we appreciate other cooperation between the municipalities. We have acquired common programs for municipality and enterprise use, we have developed program to help our enterprises to start electrical commerce for example by using the travelling reservation system.

Our target in the future is to offer good quality services in our area at reasonable expenses. That is why we are very proud of the ATM  - fibre network,  which will be in our use this year. It offers us new  and better opportunities to improve our services, to create new services and to increase the automation degree within our administration.