An Integrated Platform for Tele-voting and Tele-consulting within and across European Cities: The EURO-CITI Project

Tele-democracy is becoming increasingly important for local authorities in Europe. The EURO-CITI project aims to specify, develop and evaluate an integrated platform for two tele-democracy services, namely televoting for opinion poll petitions and tele-consulting. The technical developments are divided into those for operators at local authorities and those for citizens. The platform empowers operators at local authorities to initiate a call-forvote on a local problem, to dynamically set-up secure networks of cities and initiate a call-for-vote on common problems, to monitor voting results and extract statistical information, etc. Regarding security and privacy, authentication/authorization solutions are proposed and a Public Key Infrastructure is specified. The trial sites for the EURO-CITI platform are three European cities, namely Athens, Barcelona and London Borough of Brent.