Background
As Bulgarian preparation for joining the European Union advances, the need
of information on this topic increases. The base for creation of this site
was not the lack of information sources in Bulgaria, but the effort the
towards information systemization, including all-important aspects of the
integration process. Additionally, the goal was to offer basic knowledge
about the European structures, the European Union and other international
organizations, concentrating this information at one place.

The practice was directed towards increasing the level of information of
citizens and institutions, and at the same time, saving time and efforts for
searching the information from different sources. Providing information
about programs of the joining funds, which are opened to applying, and
giving directions for developing projects, the practice is an
additional step towards solving another significant task - effective
utilization of the pre-accession funds.

Practice

In October 2001, the structure of the Regional Administration - Varna
established a Management of projects and Euro-integration Department. In
November 2001, the department started working on creation of a web-site,
which functions were to inform citizens about the place of Bulgaria at the
world and European scene, to help the organizations developing projects, to
give opportunity for feedback reaction, and to serve as a reference book for
not quite familiar to the wide audience new terms. The team set up the main
subjects for information search. This did not exclude the possibility for
new aspects of the problems to be added in the process of work - the site
has been constantly updated.

For creation and maintenance of the site contributed the information
found on the Internet pages of numerous institutions and organizations:
Official site of the European Union (server Europe); Delegation of the European Commission in Bulgaria; Bulgarian Parliament and Government sites; NGOs and development organizations sites: Network of Euro Info Centers in Bulgaria; Foundation for Local Government Reform; Resource Center Foundation;
National Association of the Municipalities in Republic of Bulgaria; United Nations Development Programme for Bulgaria and others. In addition, the site uses information from the printed and electronic issues of Foundation for Local Government Reform/LOGIN.

The site uses is based on HTML, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. The site is hosted on the Regional Administration - Varna own web server
(Apache under Linux), which ensures free actions to the developers and
security for the customers. Specialists working on the program of Ministry of Labor and Social Policy for employment of young specialists at the government administration contributed to the site development, as well as students from Varna Independent University, a traditional partner of the Regional Administration -Varna. Besides the constant update of information, the team intends to extend the site through a forum, search and issue of articles and opinions, improvement of the interface and functionality.

Results
The innovative practice's impact is in the following directions:
- Contributes to increasing citizens` information related to the integration
process. Clarification of basic terms leads to fast an easy information
acquisition;
- Contributes to involving citizens into the United Europe idea;
- Saves time for information search from different sources;
- Relates not only to EU structures and functions, but also to other
international organizations, such as UN, World Bank, UNESCO,
UNICEF;
- Encourages the participation in various EU programs by giving information
about application opportunities and basic principles for development and
management of a project;
- Provides a common information database related to pre-accession funding programs;
- Ensures transparency about funding opportunities for solving of local problems and practical realization of Euro-integration processes at local level;
- Possibility for feedback and interaction with citizens and institutions.