- Tenth Mayors' Summit and General Assembly Meeting -

 

 

On the tenth Anniversary of the Global Cities Dialogue, the city of Helsinki was honoured to welcome the members and guests on 2 & 3 November 2009 in the place where everything began. It was a chance to look back on one decade of innovation and successful collaboration and also to look ahead. On this special occasion a Brochure and an IT Booklet have been released to share the good practices made by GCD-members and disseminate the results of noteworthy applications.

On 2 November 2009 the High Political Representatives of the cities of Ano Liossia and Trikala (Greece) as well as the city of Bandundu (Republic of Congo) signed the Declaration of Helsinki and thus became the newest members of the network.

On 3 November 2009, Mr André Santini, Chairman of GCD, started his speech with thanking Mayor Pajunen for the brilliant organisation of the event and for his warm welcome in Helsinki, ten years after the first GCD meeting in this very same city. Mr. Santini continued his speech by presenting his city, which is a truly digital city. 80% of its population is connected to the Internet by ADSL, cable or FTTH. Finally, he presented some of the issues in which Issy has been particularly innovative since the General Assembly Meeting 2008 in Lyon.

Global Cities Dialogue was also able to welcome international keynote speakers e. g.

- Governor Erkki LIIKANEN, Bank of Finland, who was the former Commissioner of the DG Information Society and Enterprises at the European Commission in Brussels: he introduced how growth contribution of ICT works e.g. for public services and how it could be speed up. Furthermore he underlined how ICT can change the organizational behaviour and what concrete actions should governments take towards the development of the Information Society;

- Dr. Takao SHIINO, from the Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. based in Japan, represented the network Global Business Dialogue on e-society in his function as Vice chairman. His speech was about “Using the Ubiquitous Network to Achieve a Sustainable Society”, emphasizing the importance of ICT and mobile green services in the 21st century;

- Mr Anil MENON, Vice President of Cisco Globalization Center on 'Smart & Connected Communities', contributed to the Summit from Bangalore, India, via the Cisco-Telepresence system, and explained in detail how they manage to bring people closer and support them to communicate, no matter the physical distances.

During the two-day Summit three interactive Mini Round Tables were successfully organized, based on the main issues of the GCD Action Plan 2009-2010:

- 1) “Mobile Public Services”: Mayor Paul HELMINGER, city of Luxembourg (Luxembourg), Mayor Dae-Woong YANG, city of Guro (Korea) and Vice Mayor Gi Wan JUNG, city of Nowon (Korea), opened the debate on presenting the necessity of including and using ICT in our daily routine, beginning with early stages of education, and of offering the citizens more mobility in their every day life, helping them to get more involved in the social life of the city. The cities of Guro and Nowon shared their views with the support of two videos covering the main aspects above mentioned. The round table was moderated by Ms Claire KLINDT, GCD General-Secretary.

- 2) “Fostering the Digital Solidarity”: Vice Mayor Meissa BEYE, city of Rufisque (Senegal), Mayor Adriano ALESSANDRINI, city of Segrate (Italy)represented by his sherpa, Mr Andrea MORONI, and Dr. Luis LOZANO (International Expert on ICT, Local and Regional Development) exchanged their experiences and took as a relevant example the project called “European and Latin American Examples of Distance Cross-Curricular Learning in Science”, abbreviated as “X-Cross”, that was a joint project implemented by GCD-cities (Bremen, Segrate, Piraí and Miraflores) over a two-year period, involving 15 schools, around 750 pupils, 40 teachers, dozens of administrative staff and 5 mayors. This round table was moderated by Mr Raymond VERSTEEGH, from Cisco Systems that friendly provided a telepresence with Madrid, from where Dr. Luis LOZANO contributed live to the session. The interactive discussion underlined the idea that local authorities should become more involved in overcoming the digital divide, also via bilateral projects between the GCD members. Moreover, a better visibility of the digital environment should be given to the citizens, and support them in using ICT.

- 3) “ICT and Climate Change”: Mayor Christos PAPPOUS, city of Ano Liossia (Greece), Vice Mayor Pekka SAURI, city of Helsinki (Finland) and Mr Daniel VAN LERBERGHE, the president of Politech Institute (Observer Member) included in their discussion concrete examples in this field, namely successfully implemented projects that aim at solving or helping the environment problems of the third Millennium, by involving as many citizens as possible. This round table was moderated by Vice mayor Pekka SAURI, city of Helsinki.

The Global Cities Dialogue was also guest speaker at the Living Lab Helsinki - Living Lab Innovations Vol.3 that took place in the afternoon on 3 November: Secretary-General Eric LEGALE and sherpa of the chair city of Issy-les-Moulineaux presented the recently launched APOLLON project with GCD member cities.

The participants of the tenth Mayors’ Summit & GCD-General Assembly Meeting could also experience the Telepresence with the city of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Viña del Mar (Chile) on the evening of 2nd November 2009. On behalf of Governor Mauricio MACRI, city of Buenos Aires that was one of the 12 founding members, Mr Jorge LINSKENS congratulated the GCD-members for their work and gave a short introduction on how Buenos Aires will improve their activities towards an Information Society free of social exclusion.

The representative of the city of Viña del Mar, Chile, Vice chair city for Latin America, Mr Rodrigo KOPAITIC, addressed in his congratulatory speech the best wishes of his Mayor Virginia REGINATO BOZZO and provided a short insight in the current situation in Latin American cities.

We truly thank the city of Helsinki for the warm welcome and the outstanding co-organization of the event!