GIM International is introducing a new service for all its readers. This month the first issue of the GIM International e-newsletter will drop into your mailbox. The e-newsletter aims to provide bi-monthly professional support in the form of business and product news, orders and contracts, links to useful dossiers on our website, and more. It will truly serve your needs in your daily work. The e-newsletter is a complementary service to the website www.gim-international.com and the printed magazine, and a new step towards membership of a brand, namely GIM International. I hope there will be even more on offer from our side in the near future; I will keep you posted. In the meantime, we ask anyone who fails to receive the e-newsletter please to check our website and ensure we have your correct e-mail address.

The first issue of GIM International for 2006 carries an interesting story about the Land Management Paradigm. Author Stig Enemark, professor in the department of planning and development at the University of Aalborg and vice-president of FIG 2005-2008, discusses the integration of land-administration systems, land policy, cadastral systems and topographic mapping within one conceptual approach. But more, he uses the terms ‘e-citizenship’ and ‘e-government’ to denote ideas helpful in implementing the paradigm. I like these terms because they are going play a major role in geomatics over coming years. All professionals in our business will have to work with these ideas, concepts of e-citizenship and e-government. E-citizenship is defined as mobilising society to engage in planning, use and allocation of resources, using technology to facilitate participatory democracy. E-government involves a government putting its information and processes on-line and using digital systems to assist public access to them.

And here I would like to throw in some more termino-logy, and introduce to you the idea of the ‘e-professional’. Definition should be something like ‘using, interpreting and working with all information arriving via e-channels to perform better in daily working life’. The e-newsletter introduced by GIM International this month, together with the website www.gim-international.com, aims to support all our readers in becoming (even better) e-professionals. As always, I am open to any suggestions or remarks you may have to offer on our newest (and, for that matter, oldest) products. Please let us know what you think. With your input we can probably make them even better.

Let me end this editorial with the most important thing: my best wishes for 2006. I hope it may bring health and prosperity for you and for your families.

Happy New Year!