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We consider DIEGO as a very successful project
as it helped both our Municipality and our citizens
Firstly, it gives the chance to disadvantaged groups to have easily access to our information
as well as to people without particular ICT experience
like for example the elderly
More specifically we have introduced the service to the elderly at the Pafos social community centre
and we have trained them accordingly to the service demands
“It is an exercise for us and helpful for every citizen.Very nice indeed"
"What service do you mostly prefer ? "
"I like mostly the news section, the local news especially, the photos and the section regarding the ancient monuments of Paphos”
Moreover through DIEGO we have implemented a very important service for us, the e-weddings.
Using this service through DIEGO, the municipality offers the chance
(mainly) to foreign couples that come to Pafos to be married with a civil wedding,
to be watched "live" from relatives and friends unable to attend .
Moreover this feature offers the relatives the chance to write
and send their wishes that will be instantly
communicated and displayed to the couple through TV screens installed inside the Town Hall
We must say here that the people are very enthusiastic regarding this service
as family and friends cannot always travel to Cuprus for attending the wedding ceremony
Also another succesful service we offer through DIEGO is the REPORT IT
A citizen can download the REPORT IT software to his smart phone
and report possible problems (e.g recycle bins full, anomalous road),
sending at the same time a photo, the geographical position and a description of the problem.
These reports will be received directly from the municipality officers, that initiate immediately actions for fixing these problems.
Thus DIEGO has helped us to increase the efficiency and the effectiveness of the municipality
and at the same time has helped us to strengthen our bonds and to improve of the proximity with our citizens.
Thats the reason why we consider DIEGO a succesful project.
We are very satisfied with our participation in the European project DIEGO
as through it we help citizens that are not familiar with these kind of technologies.
it helped us to simplify the provision of information to them
Moreover DIEGO has proved a good tool towards the effort of the city
to win this great goal: to claim and receive the title of "Cultural Capital of Europe" for 2017.
Nicosia, 14 September 2012 "THE CYPRIOT CAPITAL OF CULTURE FOR 2017 IS THE CITY..... OF PAPHOS"
I am Nicolas Jarraud and I am a program analyst at UNDP-ACT
UNDP-ACT is a project of UNDP in Cyprus which is funded from USAID,
which focuses on trying to bring people together accross the divide
focus on trying to support the grassroots level of the peace process.
As part of our efforts one of the tools that we found the most useful in
bringing people together in a meaningful way is participatory development or community participation
because is a way which people really are empowered and they take ownership of the process
rather than just being spectators so in light of this we spent a few years
working with two large organizations of the island
the Chambers of Engineers and Architects on both sides of the divide
to essentially try and capture all the work that it has been done over the last 10 to 12 years
in terms of participatory development, citizen participation in particular related to shared spaces
to areas or villages where people used to live together or maybe they could live together again
We were introduced to DIEGO through the Future Together project
through research and working with experts and participatory democracy and we very soon realized that
it is one of many tools that has a lot of potential because what we are interested in is direct democracy, citizen participation
and DIEGO provides an online platform to make that possible.
We have seen this happened in Paphos, we have seen this happened in Cyprus
and certainly this propably a lot of potential in other communities even smaller communities
because one thing we have noticed is when we have community consultation events
not everybody will take part in the same way. Some people may be more shy.
some people just dont want to be involved so publicly
whereas if you have online e-governance systems such as DIEGO
people can make comments on their own time they can do it in the safety of their own home
and they don't necessarily exposed theirselves to large croud of people who may or may not agree with them ...
So I think this type of tool has a very good future on the island
UNDP's role on the island has been a long one, there was a country office for many years
which closed down and then our program which is a peace building program
but UNDP will not be on the island forever and our role will eventually come to a close
so the question is not really who the UNDP would like to collaborate with but rather
what we leave behind and one of those legacies should really be to have establish
a principle of citizens participation as a normal thing to do
and one of the ways to do that hopefully is if the communities themselves
that who have worked with if they see a value in tools such as DIEGO
they would be able to have one extra platform and they can used to make that a reality