The ISSS/LORIS 2005 Conference will be held in Prague and Hradec Kralove on April 3--5, 2005.
Declaration on Local and Regional Information Society Development

Member of National Council of Slovakia and future
European Commissioner for Information Society and
Enterprise, Mr. Jan Figel, receives present of the
ISSS/LORIS/V4DIS conference executive director,
Mr. Tomas Rencin, from the hands of members of Slovak
delagation for the conference. On the display of the
gingerbread notebook, important information can be
read--everything you want to know about conference
can be found on www.isss.cz.

Dear friends and colleagues,

The international LORIS conference has traditionally been part of the important national conference Internet in Public Administration, which was held for the seventh time between March 28 and 30 2004 in Hradec Kralove. This year it was attended by 2,000 participants from 26 European countries. For the first time, the V4DIS: Visegrad Group for Developing Information Society conference was part of it. The importance of this extension of the conference was even greater given the fact that the meeting of state, regional and local representatives of Visegrad 4 counties and Slovenia took place one month prior to their accession to the European Union.

The conference has yielded a number of momentous conclusions. Its participants have managed to prepare a platform for comparing the e-Strategies of associations of municipalities and big cities of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern European countries. Also submitted and compared have been the state information and communications policies of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. Local and regional authorities of Visegrad 4 countries and Slovenia have adopted the eV4+/LORIS Declaration on joint action in developing information society following these countries' entry into the European Union. At the same time, representatives of acceding, candidate and other European countries have been called upon to rally behind the declaration's content. Within the framework of the conference, the gala ceremony marking the admission of new cities to the Global Cities Dialogue network also took place. The ELANET Workshop and the meeting with the e-Forum representatives significantly enriched the conference programme. An integral part was the announcement of the prize-winners of the national competitions Golden Crest, Biblioweb, @ Czech and Geoapplication of the Year, as well as the international EuroCrest competition.

We would like to thank all of you who made the long journey to the conference: European Commission representatives, representatives of governments, associations of municipalities or towns and municipalities. Special acknowledgement is in order for those who played an active role in the conference programme with their presentations.

During this week and up to the end of April, we will offer on our website detailed information and statistical data on the course of the entire conference, including relevant materials. At the present time, the conference proceedings and some audio and video recordings are already available. On the other hand, we would welcome your cooperation too. We will be grateful for any comments and suggestions you can send to the address isss@isss.cz. We also expect your active collaboration in fulfilling the conclusions of the eV4+/LORIS Declaration. And we look forward to meeting you again at the eighth ISSS/LORIS conference next year.

Tomas Rencin
Conference Executive Director