The future of municipality is digital

Two-day ideas workshop develops concepts and solutions for the digital future municipality

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13-12-17 

Stuttgart – On the way to the digital future municipalities, cross-industry ideas and solutions are required. With the second edition of the Morgenstadt workshop, the Fraunhofer IAO and the Ministry of the Interior, Digitalisation and Migration Baden-Württemberg offered all urban and regional development stakeholders a creative platform for urban innovation.

»Municipalities are the bridge builders of digitization. Less congestion, cleaner air or better medical care - all of this can become reality thanks to modern technologies. To advance these ideas, we are now offering citizens, local authorities, start-ups and applied research a creative two-day experimentation room to work on the innovative solutions of tomorrow. So we're not only talking about digitization, but also tackling it in concrete terms«, said Digitization Minister Thomas Strobl on Wednesday (29 November 2017) at the joint event "Morgenstadt-Werkstatt meets Digital Municipalities of the Future@bw" held by his ministry and the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO in Stuttgart.

»Digitization is one of the core tasks of modern societies. As a land government, we will invest in total one billion euros by 2021 into this field. Also for the 1.101 Baden-Wuerttemberg municipalities, digitalisation is no longer just some location factor, but a crucial one. People live and work there, thus nowhere else is digitization so perceptible for people. That is why the future of municipalities is also digital«, emphasized Minister Thomas Strobl. The region wants to contribute into transforming cities and municipalities into digitization dives. »In the next two years we will invest about 23 million euros in digitization in the cities and municipalities«, said Minister Thomas Strobl.

Over two days, the 350 participants of Morgenstadt were discussing and developing solutions and implementations for the city of tomorrow. Participants were provided with a framework for networking, knowledge sharing and, above all, an early exchange of ideas and solutions. »Our goal is that the municipalities in Baden-Württemberg make use of the diverse digital potential and develop into digital pioneers throughout Germany. We connect cities, municipalities and counties with innovators from business and research. In creative workshops and innovative speed-dating-formats, we develop demand-oriented solutions for the liveable and intelligent municipality of tomorrow with participants and partners«, said the director of the Fraunhofer IAO and Technology Officer of the region government, Prof. Dr. med. Wilhelm Bauer.

Example for infrastructure:

Infrastructure is a very important topic for municipalities. For example, the Road Maintenance Management 2.0 Workshop provided insights into how municipalities and their civil engineering departments can intelligently link the data gained from intelligent, continuous and above all automated roads condition recording with planning of maintenance activities. This not only ensures timely, but above all cost-efficient repair of the road infrastructure.

Example for police:

In the workshop "Community Policing" the Stuttgart police focused on communication with the citizens in an increasingly networked world. The question was what channels are the best for communication and informing the citizens.

Smart City Makeathon: »Shape.-Digitization.- Together«

With a Smart City Makeathon, the Morgenstadt workshop had a very special feature that fulfilled the promise of »Shape.Digitalizytion. Together«. The term Makeathon is a neologism, created by English "make" and "marathon". The idea behind: the participants bring in their expertise, for example from the creative scene, programming techniques or architecture, and work together on the vision of an intelligently networked city. After the so-called »Lightning Talks«, in which experts gave food for thoughts, soldering, designing and programming were carried out in different teams. The best creative works were awarded by Minister Strobl on the evening of 29 November at 17 o'clock.

Digital future municipality - main topic of digital@bw

The region government makes the digital future municipality a priority topic of its digitization strategy digital@bw. To this end, numerous measures are being launched, e.g. the nationwide "Digital Municipality of the Future@bw" competition, in which 7.6 million euros will be awarded to up to four digital model municipalities in the areas of administration, mobility or health, and another 50 municipalities be supported in the development of their digitization strategy. Details of the competition can be found at www.digital-bw.de.