The ‘Commune' of Waterloo, in Belgium, has launched a European first - Watson, the ‘virtual local councillor'.

The new service was launched on 4 October after several months of preparation by the Commune's IT team. Baptised Watson, the ‘virtual councillor' is available to answer questions asked by the citizens of Waterloo 24 hours a day. The service uses innovative technologies which represent a major contribution to the promotion of greater interactivity between local authorities and their citizens.

Winners of the European eGovernment Awards were announced today at the Ministerial eGovernment Conference in Lisbon. The City of Amsterdam from The Netherlands, the Ministry of Government Administration and Reform of Norway, the City of Besançon from France and the Portal of the Federal Government of Germany each picked up one of the prestigious awards celebrating Europe's most innovative public services.

The World e-ID Conference 2007 took place from 19th to 21st September in Sophia-Antipolis (France). It was the fourth time the conference was held, well organized by the "Forum for European e-Public Services" (e-Forum) and "Strategies Telecoms Multimedia". It was part of the Smart Event 2007, which gathered about 600 participants from nearly all over the world.

Europe continues to make sound progress on the supply of online public services. Online public services are increasingly interactive, but should strive to meet the "citizen challenge", says the latest e-Government benchmarking survey published on 20 September.

Children will be able to find out about Government, public services and the world around them in a fresh, fun and informative way through a new website, DirectgovKids, launched last March.

DirectgovKids aims to get children from five to 11 engaged with some of the areas of Government that have an impact on their lives, and to help them learn about and understand the society they are growing up in.

Belgian citizens can now use their eID cards to report crimes from an electronic terminal, directly over the Internet, to the federal police. Following successful feasibility studies, the first trials began in selected areas of Brussels in January 2007. In the first wave, crimes such as vandalism, shoplifting and bicycle thefts can be reported in just a few clicks.

In this report, I present the sixth annual update on global e-government. Using an analysis of 1,782 government websites in 198 different nations undertaken during Summer, 2006, I investigate electronic government.

The application of eGovernment is beginning to change, in some small ways, the traditional hierarchal forms of government. To deliver public services electronically, new types of interactions are often needed between departments or agencies, which are in turn changing the internal dynamics of government. The rise of electronic democracy - or eDemocracy - is part of this e-evolution which is also altering the relationship between government and citizen.