Public Access and New Information Technologies: Internet access to water quality data for the production of water for public consumption
Isabel Torres de Noronha
CITIDEP-Portugal
Regional Agencies for Environmental Protection depend on the Environmental Ministry with strong vocation for regional and local public access. CITIDEP has analysed the legal attributes, processes and type of information produced by the Regional Agency for Environmental Protection of Lisboa and Vale do Tejo. Water quality data and noise complain where the issues choosen as case-studies aiming to display information on Internet. The main advantages for the public access via Internet and, simultaneously, for DRA-LVT, where assessed. Both case-studies will be useful to evaluate the potential of using Internet to access information and, at the same time, simplifying the procedures and to reduce distance between public and administration services. The water quality case-study refers to superficial waters at withdrawls points for production of water for human consumption. The main advantages of Internet access to this kind of information is maintaining actualised water quality data, in a real time frame, specially from the point of view of public health . This procedure has the potential advantage of reducing time needed to make available information both to consumers and administration, and keep it updated.
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