Municipality of Trikala

How do you activate the local community? How do you win the trust of your fellow citizens? How do you encourage entrepreneurship? How do you produce new knowledge?

These are just some of the critical questions that modern municipalities are asked to answer. The answer to all these questions is one: "creating an open city". Opening up your processes, publishing your information and freeing up your spaces. In Trikala, all these actions are carried out and in fact particularly systematically in the last 14 months.

The network of actions is addressed to all the residents of the Municipality of Trikkaia, but also to all the social and productive entities that are active in the wider area of the city of Trikala.

The implementation of the proposed action has started in June 2017, and is evolving, improving the daily operations of the Organization.

In the city of Trikala, since June 2017, Smart Trikala was created. A smart city environment, open to new challenges and the new data of the modern era. Through Smart Trikala, the Municipality of Trikkaia, "opened" its data-procedures, publishing the available information, freeing up spaces at the same time.

Specifically, the Municipality of Trikkaia carries out the following:

• Publishes a large amount of open data (more than 67 data sources and constantly produces more) according to a specific open data policy, from all its services and resources (https://data.trikalacity.gr)
• It has illustrated geospatial information (GIS), a significant part of which is freely available to the public (https://trikalacity.gr).https://data.trikalacity.gr
• It conducts public consultations on critical issues (https://trikalacity.gr) while allowing citizens to register their interests that could be discussed.
• It collects its expenses in real time from its information systems and attributes them to its citizens, as a budget progress (https://trikalacity.gr/proypologismos/), but also in the form of indicators (today in the control center of the Municipality and soon also on its open data portal).

As a city with a tradition in Music (birthplace of Tsitsani, Kaldara, Virvo, Mitropano, Samolada, Kolokotroni, etc.) it gives space to talents: it has established an open studio for young creators, which is free to use at no cost.

It offers bicycles for free to the public as an alternative means of transportation from municipal parking lots, encouraging sustainable mobility.

As a city with a tradition in sports, it offers all the sports facilities, on specific days and times, free of charge to citizens, in the form of a time commitment.

For the implementation of the action, there was no direct collaboration with another organization.

However, the planning of the action was the result of the diagnosis of the needs of local bodies (social collectives and producers) at the local level, as they have been recorded in the past.

Since all the data and information that have been "opened" for the residents of the area was in a physical archive, the cooperation of several departments of the Municipality of Trikkaia (Technical Service, Urban Planning, Financial Service, etc.) was required, as a result of which it was activated and the agency's human resources.

As mentioned, the action was implemented and continues to be implemented in the Municipality of Trikkaia.

The above are some organized actions to bring the citizens "closer to the Municipality". Already, the result can be seen with the following element: the citizens listen to the Municipality. When he initiates actions (eg banning smoking in closed public places), citizens respond. When asked to change habits, citizens listen carefully. When asked to offer or express an opinion, citizens participate.

The most important benefit of the Municipality, from the implementation of the above actions, is, on the one hand, the achievement of the goals of a long-term strategy at the local level, and on the other hand, the participatory planning of the citizens and the feeling of co-decision at the level of decision-making are "cultivated".