Municipal information of 5 Dutch cities on the Internet

On display at the Online Information 2001 conference: All city council documents now on-line with ZyIMAGE Webserver No less than 5 Dutch municipalities, Groningen, Eindhoven, Schiedam, Delfzijl and Helmond have participated in a mutual project, to put their governmental information on the Internet. Citizens are now offered direct access to all documents which were discussed in the mayor and alderman meetings, city council meetings and all other committee meetings.

As part of the Disclosure of Information Act, the Dutch Ministry of Home Affairs has made a subsidy available to those who put governmental information on the Internet. One of the conditions being that at least 5 municipalities must work together, to create a mutual solution which satisfies all participants. This unique project has been devolved through ZyLABs close collaboration to develop a mutual strategy which has been implemented at each participating municipality.

The objectives of the project was to create a search structure which would be easily understood by all citizens, so that they have direct access to all information. In addition, the information must be transferred on to the Internet with minimal effort. This project has successfully met both its objectives.

The city councils scan their official documents and ZyLABs software publishes the information on-line, allowing citizens to search on a particular word or a combination of words which appear in the documents.

In its booth (No. 233) of the Online Information 2001 conference, ZyLAB staff is demonstrating the sites of each of the 5 municipalities: www.groningen,nl/bis, www.gemeente.eindhoven.nl, www.schiedam.nl, www.bis.delfzijl.nl and www.Helmond.nl., and is available to contribute its expertise for the implementation of similar projects at other European municipalities.

As of 1991, ZyLAB focused all of its development and marketing efforts on ZyIMAGE, aimed at delivering the best search engine available for large paper collections. World-wide, ZyLAB has sold over 600.000 licenses and has active operational installations in more than 5.000 sites. ZyLAB has several offices in Europe, the USA and Asia. All software is developed in the Netherlands.

For more information please contact:
Ian Quanstrom
ZyLAB UK Limited
4, The Deans
Bridge Road
Bagshot
Surrey
GU10 5AT
United Kingdom

For further details on Online Information:
see the web site at www.online-information.co.uk
Contact Rebekah Hart, Marketing Manager at Learned Information Europe Ltd
Telephone: +44 (0)1865 388000
e-mail: rebekah_hart@learned.co.uk.