Workshop of the Digital City Alliance Berlin on “COVID-19: Lessons learned for the Berlin Digitization Strategy” focusing on observations and experiences during the spring 2020 pandemic and drawing conclusions for a democratic and inclusive digitization policy for Berlin.
Workshop Kiez Lab @ Digital City Alliance Berlin, 6 May 2020
Digital City
Alliance Berlin
Digital City Alliance Berlin is a civil‑society coalition of more than 80 organisations, initiatives, and individuals from science, NGOs, civic tech, and social innovation that came together to influence and support the development of Berlin’s official digital strategy.
Its core purpose is to ensure that Berlin’s digital transformation is democratic, transparent, rights‑based, and oriented toward the common good.
Neighborhood Labs to jointly shape Berlin’s digital future
One of the outcomes of the workshop is the call for Kiez Labs as local, neighborhood-based contact points for digital participation. Kiez Labs are designed as accessible discursive formats embedded in an urban context as well as temporary laboratories in neighborhood facilities such as care homes, libraries, schools, hospitals, and parks.
The challenges of digital transformation are becoming increasingly tangible in the everyday lives of Berliners. There is an increasing need to get involved and take the digital future of the city into their own hands. Starting in 2019, Berlin will develop a digital strategy in which goals for the capital’s digital future will be formulated. The development of such a digital strategy, like the digital transformation itself, is a dynamic process that requires continuous management, support and reflection. In Berlin, there is already a diverse patchwork of very different initiatives and people at the local level who are practically testing visions and ways of a collaborative digitization oriented toward the common good. This potential must be made visible and used in the future development of Berlin’s digital strategy.
To this end, we propose the establishment of Berlin Kiez-Labs: Neighborhood labs to promote public discourse on Berlin’s digital future and to jointly develop Berlin’s digitization strategy. We see Kiez-Labs as a low-threshold discursive format: for joint exploratory learning, for sharing experiences, for experimenting, for negotiating conflicts, for instigating collaborations – and as a local, socio-spatially embedded complement to the newly established City Lab.
Starting in November 2019, during an initial test phase, we will organize the first temporary neighborhood labs at regular intervals and in a nomadic “pop-up principle” in changing Berlin neighborhoods and typical neighborhood locations, such as libraries, hospitals, or parks, in order to prototypically test the long-term design and potential of the neighborhood labs. Currently planned formats are impulse lectures, dialogical forums and workshops, which are aimed at as broad a public as possible. A particular concern here is learning from and with other cities and initiatives that, like Berlin, have committed themselves to the goals of the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights.
The long-term goal is to further develop and stabilize the Kiez Labs format in order to permanently incorporate local perspectives and experiences of Berlin’s civil society into the digital transformation of the city of Berlin. The neighborhood labs must therefore be a fundamental component of Berlin’s digital strategy at an early stage.
Inclusive Design
The current COVID-19 highlighted the importance of an inclusive design for digitization processes, enabling social participation and making digital infrastructures accessible to everyone in the sense of public utilities. It has become obvious that digitization policy is not a secondary field but must play a central role in cities’ sustainable development.
Berlin Players
Problems and challenges in many different areas became very clearly defined, and at the same time the very diverse Berlin players developed their ideas and potential with initiatives, neighborhoods, and the administration showing the manifold possible achievements of cooperation.
Digitization and Social Change
Digitization should no longer be understood as a technical and technology-driven policy field but must be perceived as a social change challenge that is to be designed in an interdisciplinary and participatory manner. The strategic alignment of Berlin’s digitization policy should be worked out in close collaboration in an interdisciplinary cooperative exchange process.
Digital City Alliance Berlin
Christian Grauvogel, HIIG | re:Kreators – Network for Civil Society Urban Development in Europe
Prof. Elizabeth Sikiaridi, Hybrid Space Lab
Prof. Frans Vogelaar, Hybrid Space Lab
Felix Hartenstein, TU Dresden | Inwista | Urbanophil
Hişar Ersöz, studio amore
Leon Jank, studio amore
Prof. Melanie Humann, Institute for Urban Design and Urban Research | TU Dresden
Moritz Sulger
A democratic and inclusive digitalisation policy in Berlin.
A discussion paper based on the workshop “Covid-19: Lessons learnt for Berlin’s digitalisation strategy” held on 6 May 2020.
Berlin lacks a robust digitalisation policy
The current COVID-19 crisis has vividly demonstrated to us just how important it is to design digitalisation processes in an inclusive manner, enabling social participation and making digital infrastructure accessible to everyone as a public service. It is clear that digitalisation policy is not a secondary concern, but must play a central role in the city’s sustainable development. Problems and challenges have come to light in many areas, whilst at the same time Berlin’s diverse range of stakeholders has demonstrated its potential and put forward new ideas. Initiatives, local communities, neighbourhoods and the city administration have shown in many places what we can achieve when we support one another.
Building on capacities, ideas and stakeholders
Berlin has so far lacked the political and administrative structures and clear objectives needed to successfully harness existing potential. Furthermore, substantial and broad participation from civil society is required to enable a coherent digitalisation policy in the city. Berlin has the capacities, ideas and stakeholders capable of helping to shape and drive forward a digitalisation process for Berlin that is focused on the common good, sovereign and sustainable.
Attempts to implement a comprehensive digitalisation policy in Berlin have so far been largely unsuccessful. The introduction of the e-file – a key component in implementing the e-government strategy adopted in 2015 – has failed for the time being due to problems with the tendering process. Berlin’s 2015 Smart City Strategy lacked concrete measures from the outset, and apart from the creation of a Smart City information portal, no overarching or strategic activities are evident. This year, the Berlin Senate Chancellery is endeavouring to redesign the Smart City Strategy. In 2019, the Senate Department for Energy, Economy and Public Enterprises began developing Berlin’s digitalisation strategy; however, this cannot be adopted in June 2020 as planned.
Viewed through the lens of a global pandemic, we can observe not only where problems and challenges lie, but also what ideas and potential solutions urban society has already generated. With this paper, we aim to demonstrate to those involved in digitalisation policy (in particular the Senate Chancellery and the Senate departments)
- what we see as the need for action in the short and medium term
- what expertise and ideas for solutions already exist, and
- where the provision of resources is urgently required.
Only by working together can we overcome the current challenges involved and establish a long-term digitalisation policy for Berlin.
Demands we have drawn from our observations
Whilst some issues relating to digitalisation policy can be addressed at federal level, the Senate must take the initiative to make use of its scope for action within the city and to bring about change. The past few months have shown all the more clearly that digitalisation is not just a matter for experts, but concerns everyone.
We are putting forward the following demands for discussion:
- Civil society participation in digitalisation policy in Berlin must be institutionalised.
- Public digital infrastructures must be designed to be independent, accessible and resilient.
- The data and data-processing systems that link the public sector and urban society should, as far as possible, remain in public ownership and must be designed in accordance with fundamental rights – particularly with a view to preserving and strengthening informational self-determination: open source, open data, open government and data trusts should be guiding principles for a data policy geared towards the common good.
- Software that performs governmental and societal tasks in the form of (partially) automated decision-making systems must be subject to democratic oversight.
- Development of funding programmes (e.g. for technical equipment) that reduce the digital divide in education and ensure that every pupil can take part in online lessons.
- Establishment of local contact points for digital participation (e.g. KiezLabs).
- Local systems and economies should be more closely networked and supported. This means, for example, supporting local large- and small-scale production and open digital marketplace infrastructures to ensure that local and regional firms remain independent of large corporations.
- Cultural, social and digital experimental projects must not fall victim to the battle over the allocation of budgetary resources.
Digitalisation must no longer be viewed merely as a technical and technology-driven policy area, but must be recognised as a societal transformation that requires an interdisciplinary and participatory approach.
related
PROJECTS
related
NEWS