Background The City of St. Petersburg’s Municipality stored, in various databases, many environmental data on local issues ; there was no efficient data management system by the Municipality, which was not equipped with appropriate software tools. Objectives The overall objective of the project was to develop the capacities of sustainable city management in St. Petersburg, using GIS to facilitate effective, efficient environmental decision-making. A pilot City district was identified, Kronshtadt, where specific actions were to be implemented. These included GIS capacity building for local governmental bodies and staff, coordinating scattered data within a central management information system and introducing a new scheme to regulate data exchange between local authorities. Results This LIFE TCY achieved its objectives and strengthened the capacities of St. Petersburg public sector bodies to manage local environmental resources in more sustainable and efficient ways. Improved data coordination and associated decision making has been facilitated on a pilot scale by the use of the project’s GIS tools. These are accessible via a new web portal (www.infoeco.ru) which hosts, among other data, information regarding the state of Kronshtadt district’s environment and a set of environmental monitoring indicators. Different accessibility levels are provided for different stakeholders, such as citizens and public sector staff who are able to use the new technology to help prioritising environmental problems and identifying local hot spots. The LIFE-funded tools offer useful spatial planning and can be applied to a range of issues including improved traffic management systems and clarification of environmentally safe locations for recreation areas or schools. The new technological approach allows public sector departments to operate much faster during assessment of permits for economic activity . The resulting gains in efficiency are directly passed on to users and this has helped to improve inward investment opportunities, which in turn offer important socio-economic benefits. Similarly, the new centralised system reduce significantly the time involved in issuing permissions for surface water use. Furthermore, municipal administrators have used the LIFE project’s results to help improving analysis of environmental management resource requirements in the pilot area, which had a positive effect on financial management and municipal budgeting. LIFE support to the data exchange processes succeeded in reinforcing co-operation between institutions . The easily accessible, transparent information system provides for better understanding of organisations’ environmental management activities and highlights areas where potential overlaps exist. Project partners acknowledge an increase in the flow of environmental management information shared between administrative bodies, as well as associated increased efficiency in receiving, providing and analysing information. Public consultation mechanisms within the new portal broaden its productivity potential and popularity. Scope exists for improvement of the portal’s operations through additional data. These issues are being considered during the beneficiary’s development of new strategic environmental tools, including an “Environmental passport of St. Petersburg’, that builds on the LIFE project results. Several other Municipalities have expressed their interest in the LIFE project outputs, which remain highly innovative for the Russian Federation.