“Web Service Portals: Transforming Local Administrations through Enabling Technologies”

Web services portals allow to improve and co-ordinate the offer of citizen-oriented services between different Public Sector Organizations. These portals are based on the network collaboration between public and private actors.For this reason several european digital cities have enhanced this kind of public services which can be conceived as a frontier of e-government and e-democracy. The chapter presents and discusses Web Services Portals' peculiarities and their implementation difficulties together with some significative experiences realized in several European "digital cities".