Representatives of over 60 public administrations and enterprises from Belgium’s Walloon region are studying smart city initiatives in four French cities, hoping to learn from their best-practices and to create partnerships for European programmes. Last week, the group visited Strasbourg and Issy-les-Moulineaux and next month the delegates will study smart city projects in Bordeaux and Nantes.

The Smartcities2015 delegation includes representatives from the Walloon cities of Charleroi, Liège, Mons, Namur and Tournai. They public administration representatives are accompanied by university researchers, representatives from national telecom and Walloon firms and trade groups.

The Walloon delegation hopes to learn from the French smart city project, and present their own experiences and expertise. The visit should also be encourage technological, commercial and scientific cooperation between the region and the French cities. The group is also looking opportunities to collaborate on EU-funded projects,

Earlier this summer, the Walloon Region made the development of Smart Cities one of the top-5 priorities in its economic reorganisation programme. The regions wants to extend its optical fibre network, to give citizens access to smart city technologies, and to modernise public administrations. The ‘Marshall plan 4.0’ aims to transform public administration work processes, to allow new forms of public services. For this, the region wants to increase eGovernment services, and improve employment and labour market services.

More information:

Smartcities 2014 program (in French)
Walloon Marhsall Plan 4.0 (in French)
Usine Digitale news item (in French)
Slideshare presentation