Placed under the high patronage of the French President, Jacques Chirac, and on the initiative of Andre Santini, Member of Parliament and Mayor of the city of Issy-les-Moulineaux (Paris, France), the 6th Worldwide Forum on e-Democracy will have for honor guest Brazil, country whose efforts in e-democracy and e-government have to be underlined.
8 round tables and 5 plenary sessions will allow to talk about all the subjects which contribute to the development of the Information Society and to measure the impact of the Internet, the mobile phone or the electronic cards on the democratic and administrative practices.
Several tens of international and French speakers will present their projects and the programs that are already developed in their country. We will speak particularly on the way that e-government is taking, becoming a priority for the majority of the countries, and we will discuss its consequences on the improvement of the services brought to the citizens : the electronic indentity cards, the fight against the digital divide, or the defense of linguistic diversity on the networks...
During the Worldwide Forum on e-Democracy, we will also try to explain the moves which take place in the relationship between media, citizens and political leaders, confronted to the explosion of the blogs and of "citizen journalism". Those upheavals already modified the political scene of South Korea and constitute an important challenge for the democracies of the 21st century, democracies that have to exist with the growth of the E-participation and the e-voting in the world.
Special guest of this meeting, Brazil, first country in Latin America on the development of the Information Society, will give to the public the occasion to confront the experiences on the two sides of the Atlantic on these subjects.
The Worldwide Forum became, in five years, a real crossroads of international exchanges on the impact of ICTs on the democratic life. Whereas the ICT's integrate more and more largely the public sphere, the governments in France, in Europe and in the world, have engaged for several years a reflexion on the use of these tools to renovate the democratic practices and to transform the relations between public citizens and services.
Nearly 1.500 people, representing 39 nationalities, had come to attend the debates of the 5th Forum last September.