What questions do citizens have about public administration? To which authorities do they address the most inquiries? And which offices respond particularly quickly? The answers to these and many other questions can now be found by anyone interested on a new data analysis platform.

Which digital trends already influence the work of the administration today, which changes are emerging for the future? Fraunhofer FOKUS and its Competence Center Public IT hope to provide an answer in the recently published "ThemenRadar" by Behörden Spiegel, a monthly national newspaper for the public service.

In German municipalities there are numerous innovative projects concerning digital solutions to the challenges of rural areas. The latest publication by the Competence Center Public IT (ÖFIT) provides an overview of these approaches and the conditions under which they are successful.

The ERIC Innovation Fund project, in which Fraunhofer FOKUS is involved as a project partner, successfully concludes patient recruitment this March under a selective agreement with BARMER. The telemedical platform set up for ERIC is currently being expanded for the COVID 19 location center in Berlin.

How can the potentials of large amounts of urban data, which are already being collected today, be utilized in practice? FOKUS scientists Philipp Lämmel and Nikolay Tcholtchev, along with colleagues from the Smart City Platform Bable found answers to that question for the Liverpool City Region within a Good Practice Guide. The Liverpool City Region (LCR) had commissioned Fraunhofer FOKUS and Bable to draw up a guideline for action.

CityLAB Berlin launches the new online platform “Hack the Crisis” to support ideas and projects of the Berlin community all around COVID-19. The platform is intended to promote the exchange between health authorities, science and IT experts and enables all committed people to submit proposals or specific problems which will be worked on together. The Digital Public Services business unit of Fraunhofer FOKUS is participating in the initiative as a partner.

Free Software offers diverse potentials for public administration, but is often misunderstood in this field. In the latest publication “Public Money Public Code - Modernizing Public Infrastructure with Free Software” from our Public IT Competence Centre, experts clarify the most common misconceptions about Free Software, present numerous examples in public administration and answer questions on aspects such as IT security, competition policy or procurement.

The digitalization of the public administration is in full swing. To ensure that employees are also qualified for digitized work, the IT Planning Council has launched the Qualifica Digitalis research project.