Here is an interesting travel for you. You have never seen or heard of such a thing before.

Traveling online - as it corresponds to Covid pandemic.

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The first station –Lanchkhuti official web page http://lanchkhuti.gov.ge/

Take a look to the right of the screen. Everything seems to be familiar in the list, but there is one different name: electronic manager https://lcman.ge/

This is precisely the innovation that we must tell you about - a unique web application that has no analogue in Georgia (and not only). It was created especially for Lanchkhuti. The author of the application is Amiran Gigineishvili - radio engineer, programmer, designer, researcher, economist, PR specialist.

Mr. Amiran is a member of Lanchkhuti City Council and a member of the board of the Local Governments Association of Georgia. He has many years of working experience in civil society organizations, participated in more than 40 trainings in the USA and various European countries. At the moment he is the chairman of the "Georgian Rural Hall" http://www.darbazi.org.ge/

It all started, after this organization got involved in the project “A common forum for CSOs from Guria, Imereti and Racha-Lechkhumi for PAR Roadmap monitoring”.

The project is implemented by the Fund "Sukhumi" in partnership with Imereti Scientists Union "Spectri" and the Fund of Women Entrepreneurs.

This organization from Lanchkhuti was initially distinguished by its activity and initiatives.

Last summer, according to the project, a grant competition was announced: 16 organizations out of eight municipalities were involved. Interesting ideas were presented and each of them received a small grant.

Where did the members of Lanchkhuti organization get this idea from?

Amiran Gigineishvili recalls: “During one of the lockdowns, I came to the administrative building of Lanchkhuti municipality for a City Council meeting (I am a member of the City Council) and saw that security service did not let visitors to enter the building - to meet the Mayor and members of the City Council. Then there was a restriction on the movement of internal municipal transport. Result: the participation of citizens in the process of making municipal decisions became almost zero, it became impossible to visit the decision-makers for personal issues. This became the basis for the creation of a web application”.

The idea was pretty ambitious. The project “The electronic communicator of reporting and transparency for Lanchkhuti municipality” was developed.

An excerpt from the project proposal:

“Project objectives: formation of technical requirements and design of a web application for the electronic communicator of City Council activities, elaboration of an application and publication in the Internet, increasing knowledge of web application management and skills of the apparatus staff; informing the population about the possibilities of the application and its use, administration of the web application”.

The web application was developed using ASP.NET and C ++ program scripts and using MS SQL server. Windows hosting was purchased to place it on the Internet. The web application was attached to the official web page of the City Council. The banners were posted on the City Council website, on the websites of the Georgian Rural Hall and Lanchkhuti Information Center.

All tasks have been completed. During three months, with small finances, a lot has been done.

Amiran Gigineishvilli shares with us: “Now, everyone, without leaving home, can personally address a City Council member, Mayor, deputy, head of the service via the Internet. We made it even more complicated and included the City Hall. The exit is carried out from the official page of the municipality using the button - electronic manager. If the answer from them is late, the surname will turn red on this page, this fact increases the responsibility level".

Lanchkhuti official website also has a participatory budget platform and it is also developed by Amiran Gigineishvili https://idealanchkhuti.ge

This platform can lead to the municipal web page and to the electronic manager.

The ending of an interesting journey is as follows:

The electronic manager is working!

Residents of the municipality have a schedule of events planned for the next 30 days, information about City Council meetings, the ability to downloading important documents.

Most importantly, there is also the contact information of City Council and City Hall officials. Anyone can enter into a dialogue with a local government representative: call, write a mail, go to a personal page.

City Council members received 57 letters, and they answered all of them...

This has been introduced only in Lanchkhuti so far.

Although, a good deed always has followers. This idea, as a good practice, was taken by Ambrolauri.

https://open-amb.ge/ - this link shows that the electronic manager is ready in Ambrolauri. Only two people have registered so far, and no letters have been sent yet, but  the main thing is, that there is a model and it will gradually become active.

Therefore, within the framework of our project in October 2019, a forum for civil society organizations of 8 municipalities of Guria, Imereti and Racha-Lechkhumi was created.

There were 16 organizations on the forum and 14 more organizations were added.

https://csoforum.ge/index.php/ka/about-forum-ka-1 as noted in this field of the web page: “The forum is a place for collaboration. Civil society organizations learn from each other and transfer best practices from one municipality to another”. The Forum is a place for cooperation. CSOs are encouraged to learn from one another, transferring best practice approaches from one municipality to the other.

"Electronic manager" of Lanchkhuti is a confirmation of this, as well as an indicator of the project success and a high-class professional, author of interesting ideas with many years of practice - Amiran Gigineishvili is the best example for colleagues. This is a person who is always ready for cooperation and the exchange of experience...