Expertise
The Culture Department is a prestigious part of the organization of the City Council of Rome. The cultural activities are considered one of the most important activities of the Major of the City, who gives great importance also to international relations. His Office for the University Policy and for the European Projects, known as Culture Department, promotes and produces some local and international events and meetings, services and activities for the students and other initiatives in the context of the numerous universities of Rome. Besides the Cultural Department is connected with the network of the civic libraries and the network of the information centers for young people.
We have an extensive experience in the communication on line with our Web sites ( www.comune.roma.it/cultura, www.informagiovaniroma.it and others). These Web sites are visited every day by a very big number of users. Besides the City Council of Rome, enclosed the Culture Department, is involved in an experimental e-learning project on web based platform “Marco Aurelio”, dedicated to the refresher courses and the increase of the communication for his employees. Finally we have, in the context of the civic e-government, a Digital Forum, named “City-University” (the URL is www.informagiovaniroma.it/forum), for university students, who can make some questions to the city councillors and the university management about their problems in the urban life and in the advancement of the studies.

Experience
The Office of the European Projects has recently developed two projects. In the programme “Culture 2000”, the project “In-visible Out-skirt” about digital arts for the visual education of the young people who live in the city suburbs, has been coordinated by the City Council of Rome. The principal objectives of this project have been: encouraging young people to find out and evaluate the work of young artists on a basis of knowledge and respect combined with a shared interest in ICT; increasing and sharpening young people’s creativity and sensibility to the widest range of digital arts; supporting communication and encouraging exchanges of ideas among citizens, artists, students and internet people; reconsidering deprived areas as one of the most sensitive fields of artistic experience and research.
As partner the Office has developed, in the programme Leonardo da Vinci, the project “Guidenet” about the guidance for young people. The aims of the project “Guidenet” aim at assembling, distilling and building a European expertise and innovation, disseminating outputs and results as widely as possible throughout the EU/EEA and applicant countries. The project has achieved the creation of a network of individuals and organisations, interested in new developments and good practice in Guidance: at the beginning of the project the partners were 32 while now they are over 250 (www.guidenet.org). The Cultural Department in this project has developed the implementation of the on line data bank about guidance, has taken part in the dissemination and in the communication about the project.