Our project partner, GESIS, attended the 21st expert forum hosted by the Federation of German Internet Portals under the topic “Status quo municipal internet portals?”

  • Print
Details
Category: Blog
Created on Thursday, 27 August 2015 15:26

Many local authorities are hosting websites for providing information for citizens and the local economy. Some websites include tools to engage relevant actors in the decision-making process. However, given the digital change, new requirements (like mobile usage) come up. Hence the key question is: if “traditional” websites of local authorities are obsolete, how to overcome the issue of new requirements? The 21st expert panel “Quo vadis local websites” addressed these issues by comparing different local authority cases of current website releases. The event took place in Berlin and was organized by the Federation of German Internet Portals. Its co-organizers were the German association for cities and local communities and the German association for local districts. The event’s results will be used to learn from local authorities’ workflows and identify potential scenarios within the mentioned field of information research and Open Data. The main outcome of this event was that budgets are too limited and will not increase soon, so local authorities need to find effective strategies for providing state of the art internet portals for citizens and local companies. Concerning the level of decision-making or publishing Open Data, approaches like SENSE4US may add benefit to these strategies.