Conclusion of public participation Smart City Jena

Conclusion of the Smart City Jena public participation at the Thuringian Digital Festival!

Today marked the end of the public participation process for the Smart City Strategy, which has been running since March 9, 2022. As part of the Thuringian Digital Festival, Jena's citizens were able to contribute their ideas on the various goals and measures.

The participation phase for the strategy of the Jena Smart City project enabled a dialog between citizens, administration and other stakeholders in a total of 11 online and analog events. Since March 14, 2022, all interested parties have been able to use the participation platform https://mitmachen.jena.de to comment on the objectives and measures in the fields of action.

At the Smart City Festival, the citizens of Jena had one last opportunity to get involved in the various goals and measures on site: Be it in conversations, on posters or directly online via two terminals. Children were able to let off steam by drawing and putting their digital city of the future on paper.

Digitalization Officer Benjamin Koppe emphasized: "For us, the input from citizens was very important. Digitalization must create added value in their very personal lives. The events provided an opportunity to discuss in very concrete terms where there are opportunities to make everyday life easier, for example through telemedicine or enhancements to citizen services. This exchange and feedback on the city administration's strategy work is essential for further refinement."

Chief Digital Officer and overall Smart City project manager, Manuela Meyer, commented on the commitment of the citizens involved: "The series of events and the online participation have confirmed that we are on the right track and that the goals and measures have been very well received. We are particularly pleased that all areas of action were able to incorporate new ideas, which will now be incorporated into the overall strategy."

Most of the events on the areas of action were held on the Gather.Town platform. This made it possible to take part in the conference digitally, visit workshop rooms virtually and talk to the sub-project managers and participating guests. Even though the events were held digitally, these options brought them very close to a face-to-face event.

Smart City process

Since September 2020, the city of Jena has been funded as part of the Smart Cities model projects of the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Building. The city is currently developing its own Smart City strategy. Before this is presented to the Jena City Council for a decision in November, the citizens of Jena were involved in the process in various ways and events and their ideas were incorporated.

Further information can be found at smartcity.jena.de .