Brussels, 15 November 2010

The Belgian Presidency is hosting a Conference in Brussels under the title “Lift-off towards Open Government”. The main theme of this conference will be about “Open Government”, emphasizing the implementation of cross-border interoperability in practice. The Digital Agenda and eGovernment Action Plan 2015 will feature prominently in the conference programme, with Neelie Kroes being the first speaker after the opening by EU President Herman van Rompuy.

Lift-off towards Open Government

The main conference takes place on December 15th and 16th in Brussels. A pre-conference day is held in Ghent on December 14th. At this pre-conference PSI re-use and open data are part of the programme, as well as presentations by Dries Buytaert on Drupal and working in the cloud, and Cory Doctorow (twitter) on "Information doesn't want to be free. People do."

Also the Citadel Statement, a citizen led follow-up to the likewise citizen initiated Open Declaration on Public Services 2.0 in Malmö in 2009 and pan-European call to action to help local government on achieving the key objectives of the Malmö Ministerial Declaration of 2009.

The main conference, after several key notes by amongst others Vivek Kundra, the US CIO, addresses various themes and topics in blocks of speakers and panels on the basis of main questions:

• Cyber threats for successful eGovernment
• How efficient and effective is my Government?
• Is my government thinking about me first?
• Is my eLaw "Open Government ready"?
• How can I measure the real added value of my government?
• How can I trust the rest of Europe?
• How green is my (IT in) Government?
• Where and how can I influence my politicians?
• Let's talk about clouds...
• The law of the jungle?

Registering for both the conference and pre-conference is possible at the "Open Gov 2010 BE" website.