Leo G. Anthopoulos
Leo G. Anthopoulos is a PhD candidate in the Department of Informatics, of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He was born in Trikala, Greece, where he completed his education. He is a teacher of informatics in Greek secondary education, a computer science consultant for the Municipality of Trikala, Greece, and he is supervising the development of several e-government projects. He is the scientist responsible for the e-Trikala project, the first Digital City in Greece. Anthopoulos is the co-author of two previous GTI articles Moving Toward the E-City, and E-Government: A Greek Perspective

Trikala -- announced as the first Digital City in Greece by the Greek Vice Minister of Economics C. Folias late last year -- will finish its first phase of development by the middle of 2006, with funding from the Greek Information Society Framework Program.

The Digital City ICT applications aim to improve everyday life by simplifying public transactions, reducing telecommunication costs and by delivering new services related to the local way of life. Those ICT applications also offer new methods to enable citizens to participate in policy-making, and help ensure local government and public authorities as guarantors of the local society's proper operation.

Every medium-sized city has its own social, economic, geographic or political characteristics. For this reason the digital city can vary from region to region, so that ICT applications enhance local characteristics rather than detract from them.

The Digital City Model

The Digital City has four-layers:

• Infrastructures: refer to the necessary hardware and software to make the Digital City operational (eg. fiber optic or wireless public broadband networks, local networks, terminals for public use, points of access, operation systems etc).
• Application layer: applications and digital services that refer to life events or business situations. For example:
  Consider a citizen who wants to travel by bus from place A to place B in the area of a Digital City. The traveller needs to know the exact time of departure and arrival of the appropriate bus. This service will be offered via the "Intelligent Transport Systems" infrastructures and is delivered to the citizen via a Web portal, an RDS system or through a digital board installed in the bus station. A citizen who wants to apply for a birth certificate will be assisted by an "e-Government system," and will be "triggered" by a call to a 311-like phone number or via the Internet, will be executed in the municipal back office and the birth certificate will be posted to the citizen.
• End-users: refer to citizens, organized teams of citizens (eg. students, municipal employees etc).
• The back-office: refers to all organized authorities and enterprises that produce and deliver information to the end-users or execute public services and digital transactions in general. Employees, who belong to municipal authorities for instance, will execute public services. Additionally, local enterprises will participate in local electronic market places.

The E-Trikala Project consists of a number of individual ICT projects, some of which are already implemented. Others are in the auctioning process, while others are in the design phase. All projects described here refer to the first phase of e-Trikala. When the projects are implemented, a business plan will be designed that will focus on their maintenance and extension. The E-Trikala project is developed under the responsibility of the Municipality of Trikala.

Promotion of Broadband Use
The Digital City will be a successful project only if users become active members and participants of digital affairs.