The advent of the internet as a publicly available service in the 1990s set new standards for communication. With e-mailing and chatting in the picture, the way people talk to each other was revolutionized; within years, it became normal to have a least one personal computer per household in the westernized …

Background As the level of government closest to citizens and the real economy, local and regional authorities have an important role in tackling the severe impact of the current economic crisis. The double pressures of decreasing public revenue and increasing demand for services, however, call for more …