Study praises Jena as an open data pioneer
The study "Mastering municipal challenges digitally"commissioned by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protectionpraises Jena as one of three cities as a pioneer in the collection, use and provision of open data. Among other things, they serve to improve municipal services and the transparency of municipal processes.
Every two years since 2015, the Federal Ministry of Economics has commissioned a survey on the digitalization status of German municipalities. The fourth edition of the study series has now been published, which is supervised by the "Stadt.Land.Digital" office and provides comprehensive figures on the level of digitization in municipalities. The results show progress, but also challenges on the way to becoming a smart city.
The city of Jena provides open data on its own platform . Here, data records can be searched using keywords and/or data on specific categories can be viewed. These include, for example, data on population, education, mobility or business and work.
"[...] in the case of open data or urban platforms, there is often a lack of money or personnel to drive these issues forward. There are also security concerns in this area. According to the study, only one in ten municipalities collects open data at all or makes it available for further use. The cities of Moers, Münster and Jena are cited as open data pioneers," reports Tagesspiegel Background "Smart City & Administration" exclusively.
Not only the open data platform, but also the SmartFLOSS website, which provides an overview of open source development projects for smart cities, has made a significant contribution to this pioneering role . This networking opportunity is intended to strengthen cooperation between local authorities and facilitate exchange and participation in the projects. The website was initialized and developed by Martin Berger, treasurer of the city of Jena and sub-project manager of the "Digital infrastructure and data policy" field of action, as part of the Smart City project.
According to the survey, the position of Chief Digital Officer (CDO) or digitalization officer is also a key success factor for municipal digitalization. Such positions already exist in around a third of German municipalities - including Jena. Manuela Meyer, CDO and overall project manager of Smart City Jena, is delighted with the results of the municipal survey: "It is an incentive for us to implement our project ideas and measures step by step in the coming years - and thus add many exciting digital services and data to the analog world."
The department head responsible for digitalization, Benjamin Koppe, says in this context: "The central focus of our Smart City strategy is to generate knowledge from data. With the knowledge gained, it will be possible to make even better strategic deductions for a liveable Jena. We are very pleased about the recognition and public awareness. Thanks to the federal funding for "Smart Cities Model Projects", we will also have the necessary funds over the next few years to further develop the open data platform and make it more user-friendly." However, according to Koppe, it remains an important task, as the public participation phase over the past four months has shown, to make as many people in Jena as possible aware of the potential of freely accessible data that is available online.
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Background: Info GmbH Markt- und Meinungsforschung collected data from local authorities in all German states for the study. The target group for the representative survey was people with municipal management responsibility. Between February 2022 and April 2022, 116 municipalities were surveyed by telephone and 439 municipalities were surveyed in writing. The study focused on the topics of digitalization, the coronavirus pandemic and financial challenges when introducing a digitalization strategy.
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