AN EXPERIMENT IN PUBLIC INFORMATION ACCESS -
THE ON-LINE WASTE GUIDE
Melissa SHINN* and Rui BERKEMEIER**
* Volunteer collaborator - CIR working group, Quercus. Mjshinn@hotmail.com
**Project co-ordinator Ü CIR working group, Quercus. Apartado 4333, 1503-003 Lisboa.
Quercus@quercus.pt
In order to provide a public, including everyone from your average citizen to students, academics, special interest groups, businesses and local government, access to information on the national waste situation and environmentally correct strategies for waste management, the Portuguese Environmental NGO, Quercus established The Waste Information Centre. (CIR- Centro de Informação dos Resíduos). The volume of requests for information being received quickly exceeded the small response resources of the CIR. Since over 80% of these requests were by electronic mail it was proposed that the most efficient way to meet the information demand would be to construct an on-line database - the Waste Guide.
The Waste Guide will be available within the CIR's homepage on the Internet. The information is to be collected and updated through several sources Ü academic, media and other NGOs but most importantly its is also to be derived from formal information exchange protocols to be celebrated with a broad spectrum of entities involved in waste management. These may include businesses, national and local government bodies and research institutes.
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