Prato – Modena, 25-31 January 2007

A delegation from Serbian Municipalities and Cities, partners of the SIRP Programme, has been visiting the Department of Planning and Territorial Management of the Italian Province of Prato and the Department for Information Systems of the Municipality of Modena.
Members of the Municipal working groups which will implement a TIS Pilot Project in Kragujevac, Nis, Pancevo, Valjevo, Kraljevo and Cacak, enthusiastically participated to the study tour on Territorial Information Systems TIS organized by SIRP, as part of the programme capacity building activities carried out through the transfer of know-hows and good practices from the European context.

Technicians and municipal officers and councilors from Serbia took the opportunity to exchange experiences and gain useful technical and methodological know-hows from their Italian colleagues.
The program of the study tour included the participation to the manifestation “Pratosophia 07: geographic information, valorization of resources and management of the territory” organized by the Province of Prato from 25 to 27 January.

During the three-day conference, several experiences and pilot projects from Italian Provinces have been presented and confronted, animating round tables and debates on future perspectives for the development of the territory and the use of information systems as a tool for territorial strategic, participatory and sectoral planning.

The collaboration between the Serbian and the Italian local administrations and their technical offices and departments will be actively supported by the Programme SIRP throughout follow up activities related to the implementation of Municipal TIS Pilot projects.

Serbian Municipal participants have now the important role of bridging with their colleagues in each municipality and tailoring the acquired knowledge to the local context in the first steps of development of their Municipal Territorial Information Systems. They are called to be pioneers in Serbia.