The administrative activity of the municipality suffered from disorganization and insufficient control. There were overdue service requirements and delay of decisions for numerous municipal issues. Documentation circulation realized slowly. Gathering information for analysis and decision taking experienced great difficulties. In many cases, citizens had to seek information from the work offices. Checks and quality control of the terms of service implementation turned to be almost impossible.

The idea for total improvement of the management of the municipal administration served as a base for building the automated information system. The first stage was installment of a structural cable system at the municipal building. The requirements of the ISO9000 for quality and security in installment and maintenance of information systems were covered. The cable system is of a Star type. There is a single distribution panel at the building distributive board, which operates the projection of eighty double RJ45 work points. The total number of functioning computers at the Municipal Administration is thirty-three, as all of them are connected to the local computer net. The Internet connection is realized through radio-modem of the local Internet provider.

After supplying with the necessary equipment and building of the local net, the Municipal Administration adopted the specialized program product Acster Office . It has been designed to manage the documentation circulation. The program offers a friendly interface and does not require profiled training for use.

Basic principles are:

- network, including numerous work points simultaneously

- information save at server database

- the system allows automated or facilitated manual documentation processing and all related objects introducing, step processing, re-directing implementation, etc.

- each document or resolution could be related to attending files, called originals , saved on FTP server

- all the information could be controlled and, if wished, the checks could be printed

- four customer groups ensure the system safety: USER1, USER2, USER3, and USER4, depending on the priorities and customer s rights

- each user is a member of one of the groups above; hence, the operations he/she is allowed to.

Acster Office Program has been realized after the client-server technology, which ensures all municipal employees with simultaneous access to the necessary information through a local net. The system allows documentation and service implementation control.

At this stage, it is possible for the information system of the municipality to integrate with the information environment of the government administration, and realize information exchange with outer information databases using high technologies, such as Internet.

As a part of the automated information system is included the Center for citizens` information and services, which functions on the one sto shop principle. Its building was financed by the Foundation for Local Government Reform and the American Agency for International Development as a part of the Improvement of Citizens` Servicing Program. Officially, the Center opened doors on October 10^th, 2002.

The most valuable effect of the automation and adoption of the one stop shop service was separation of the process of administrative service from the other functions of the municipality management, operational, etc. The variety of services was widened and their quality improved. High level of automation created conditions for sterling functioning of the municipal information system, which improved the management of the whole Municipality of Panagiurishte.