Visegrad Four Conference on Informatization of Society

04/09/2009, Prague/Hradec Králové, Česky , Magyar , Polski

Simultaneously with the conference Internet in State Administration and Self-government in the days 6--7 April 2009 in the Aldis Congress Centre there met already for the sixth time representatives of the public administration of Visegrad Four countries within the event V4DIS (Visegrad Four for Developing Information Society) to discuss development of eGovernment and other topics within broader central-european context. V4DIS conference was supported by International Visegrad Fund and traditionally it was held under the personal auspices of the President of Senate of the Parliament of CR Přemysl Sobotka.

The prestigious meeting V4DIS was held in the spring Hradec Králové for the first time in the year 2004 and since then it has shown an increasing interest of the employees of the state administration, self-government as well as representatives of associations, municipalities and regions of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary and even a whole number of countries which neighbour on Visegrad region. The participants appreciate mainly the possibility of international exchange of experience in the area of informatization of public administration--especially regarding the fact that in case of V4 states it concerns countries with common historical development, similar economic potential and equal position within European Union.

As the President of Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic Přemysl Sobotka says himself, "mutual inspiration by examples from Visegrad region can significantly contribute to a far faster development of e-government in this part of Europe." Besides the Visegrad conference there was also held under Přemysl Sobotka's auspices the competition JuniorCrest, which is relatively a new activity that originated from the cooperation of students from a few countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

This year a very numerous delegation from public administration from neighbouring Slovakia participated in the Visegrad meeting. Among its members there were representatives of state bodies (for example deputy of the government of SR for information society Pavol Tarina), delegation of Government Office of SR, Union of towns of Slovakia, whose members were general secretary Marián Minarovič, president of the initiative eSlovakia Miroslav Drobný, vice-lord mayoress of Bratislava Anna Dyttertová, vice-lord mayor of Šaľa Jozef Mečiar and others, further there was for example a lord mayor of Moldava upon Bodva István Zachariáš and the whole number of other representatives of public administration as well as academic sphere.

From Hungary there came delegations from Hungarian towns Encs and Karcag, from Poland there took part representatives of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland and traditionally there took part also Alfa-Omega Foundation, which takes a significant share in development of information society in Poland. Among the guests there were also representatives of the town Rybnik nominated for one of the awards in the competition EuroCrest as well as the awarded participants of the international competition of young talents JuniorCrest (Peter Žídek from Slovakia and two representatives from Poland--Ksenia Frąszczak and Maciej Bis).

The conference V4DIS contributed also to the gala evening programme of the whole event--besides the new international competition JuniorCrest for young creators of internet projects there took place similarly as in the past years an announcement of the results of the international competition EuroCrest for the best web pages of the towns, municipalities or regions. In this competition there are annually nominated individual participants and that is not only from the Visegrad Four countries through their national associations--often according to their placing in the national competitions such as for example Czech Golden Crest, Golden Crest of Slovakia or Polish Golden At. Among nominated projects there was awarded together with Jihlava and Slovak Bratislava also Polish town Rybnik.