Iperbole, Bologna Civic Network, is operating since the 9th of January 1995. It is one of the first services of this kind that has been realised by a public administration in Europe. Bologna is quite advanced in using the Internet for new forms of teledemocracy, administration transparency, and the right to be informed. Special emphasis is given to enhance the interaction with and participation of citizens in the administrative decision making process in order to update and evolve public institutions.

Iperbole is the result of several European Projects (City Card Esprit, Million, Web4Groups, SeNIOR ON LINE, NETFORNETS, FAOL, Netizens, Leonardo, etc), carried out together with international groups composed of public administrations, private enterprises, research centres, and universities. These projects aimed at creating new network applications and software solutions that promote user-friendly interfaces, use of simple and natural language, message routing and artificial intelligence techniques (teleconferencing, telelearning, telebooking, tourism, service distribution via network, etc.). All projects encourage easy relationships between citizens and public administrations and were continuously checked by analysing "user requirements", collected via questionnaires on the web with randomised groups of citizens or during "user validation" meetings.

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