Driving the citizen-oriented information on the electronic highway

The paper outlines the design and ongoing development of the Citizen Information Network (CIN) which makes information available to meet the growing demands from citizens for better information about public administration services and self-organized initiatives as well as for better communication among citizens about community affairs. Multimedia technology offers new opportunities but there are complex problems to solve, in particular with regard to data structure and data logistics, and interactive user interface design for casual users. The CIN enables users to get information comprised of text, photos, pictures, voice, and video elements in a multimedia kiosk, to search for the required information via a full-text retrieval from the frequently updated database. Original features of the approach of Bremen concern a public-private partnership and cost-sharing between a tourist and a citizen information system as well as a technical open client server architecture. The creation of such a system is a software and organization development process.