Julia was invited to speak at the 5th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV2011) that took place in Tallinn, Estonia from the 26th to the 28th September, 2011. The prestigious event co-organised by the UNU-IIST Center for Electronic Governance attracted thought leaders and practitioners from across the world. During her keynote speech Julia discussed today’s challenge’s for local government as increased citizen expectations and the current economic crisis create new demands. In this climate cities must deliver more for less, such as better infrastructure as well as more efficient and responsive services. Julia presented the concept of Living Labs, Social Media and growing trend of Smart Cities as a potential solution to this challenge and gave examples of initiatives, such as the EPIC project (www.epic-cities.eu) that deploy the Living Labs approach. Read more athttp://www.icegov.org/.