Parthenay, the digital town: myth or reality?

We present Parthenay, a town in the Poitou-Charentes region of west rance, notable for several reasons, especially for the scale of commitment by the people and the administration of the town to the concept and realisation of a community-based interactive system. Comparatively speaking, the Parthenay project may be considered quite a mature digital town. Its preparatory period goes back to almost two decades. Its holistic strategy embraces a comprehensive array of applications, including local administration, citizen activities, education, local e-commerce and a community-shared knowledge base. The Parthenay ideological posture towards the adoption of technical innovation is predicated on the idea of a proactive citizenry – to paraphrase the familiar slogan, “community systems by, for and of the people”. Active citizenry was central to the formulation of the Parthenay system in terms of the following, communication between citizens and the municipality, communication between citizens and the outside world, but most especially, communication between citizen and citizen. In summary, citizen appropriation of the proposed communication infrastructure is the informing principle of system development at Parthenay. In terms of generalisable outcomes applicable to other like-minded communities, it may be said that projects such as Parthenay act as inspirational exemplars for such communities, rather than as replicable models.