A municipal utility is more than a service company: it is part of a city’s identity, core of what is often called the municipal corporation, an important power player.
The Germany town of Emden sits at the edge of the North Sea. This community of 50,000 people has been operating as a town for over 800 years. Today, it is home to a shipbuilding wharf, an automotive plant, and a university. Emden is surrounded by water and endless flat land with windmill farms and biogas plants. Unfortunately, many young people are not convinced that Emden is the sexiest place they ever wanted to live in. Like many European regions, Emden is fighting demographic change and the exodus of young people, while larger cities fight collapse because of inflow.
Read more: DE: Lower Saxony: Emden: The Digital Transformation of Small Utilities in Germany
The German internet association Eco has put the states of Hessen, Baden-Wurttemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia in the first three positions of its first study on Digitale Landerkompass digital policy.
The state of Hessen ranked first mainly due to the fact that it has developed a comprehensive digitization strategy and a large number of concrete funding projects. The Department of Digital Strategy and Development, which is directly under the Prime Minister of the state, was founded in January of this year and deals primarily with questions of artificial intelligence and the needs the firms in terms of digitization and social acceptance.
The majority of Germans wants better digital management of citizen services, according to a study by the German digital association Bitkom published on Wednesday.
Two thirds of all respondents thought that it is possible to deal with administrative formalities online without any problems.
Read more: Germans wish for more digital services in public sector: study
Sören Link, Mayor of Duisburg, Germany, has lead a 19-person government delegation to visit Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China. The visit, which took place from September 3 to 4, aims to deepen their cooperation in Smart City development. Their cooperation will focus on transforming Duisburg from a traditional industrial city into a service-oriented Smart City through smart government, smart port logistics, smart education, smart infrastructure, 5G and broadband, smart homes and urban IoT.
Read more: DE: Huawei set to transform German industrial heartland into Smart City
Politicians back proposals for a two- to three-year rollout of Windows 10, as well as a trial of Microsoft Office 2016 on 6,000 PCs.
The German city of Munich, famous for ditching Microsoft in favor of open-source software, today agreed to stop using Linux and switch back to Windows, in a pivotal vote.
If the decision is ratified by the full council in two weeks, Windows 10 will start rolling out across the city in 2020.
Read more: DE: Bavaria: Linux pioneer Munich supports Windows 10 rollout from 2020 in key vote