The city of Hattersheim wants to advance digitization.

As part of the Online Access Act, all municipalities nationwide are obliged to offer many more services in digital form.

In order to put this into practice, a three-person digitization department was set up in Hattersheim.

But it should not stop there: the city is currently developing a comprehensive digital strategy and has brought in the consulting company PWC.

In the past few weeks, numerous discussions have taken place with municipal employees, and citizens are also to be involved in one of the next steps.

How this can be implemented in a meaningful way is currently being discussed.

Andrea Diener

Correspondent in the Main-Taunus district

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The free WiFi hotspots in the city area have certainly caught the eye of some residents.

To make the Internet even faster, Hattersheim has joined the Frankfurt/RheinMain gigabit region, which supports municipalities in fiber optic expansion.

For Mayor Klaus Schindling (CDU), the new technologies should not only be used to facilitate cooperation with the city administration, they should also be useful in everyday life.

To this end, the city is working with the Taunus Innovation Campus (TIC), an association based in the city that promotes digital concepts.

Digitization as a chance against vacancies

The new co-working space, which will soon open in the former Commerzbank branch on Frankfurter Straße, is also a child of the TIC and will soon also be its headquarters.

In the spring, the flexible jobs will be available to the self-employed and start-ups.

The Office of Economic Development should also be present there in order to be able to exchange information with traders even better.

The co-working space is also the first measure from the "Future City Center" funding program of the State of Hesse.

Hattersheim was included in the program, which aims to support municipalities in making their centers new and attractive.

Measures that are implemented as part of the program receive 85 percent funding from the Hessian Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Because digitalization, according to the city's strategy, can offer an opportunity to take action against vacancies in the city center.

A currently unused property is to be rededicated as an e-sports arena in which computer game enthusiasts can compete against each other.

The format is particularly popular with young people, but venues are rare.

In cooperation with local teams and clubs, such an offer can be made to young people in the city centre.

"It will be important to look for the right actors to revitalize the street," says First City Councilor Karl Heinz Spengler (FWG).

In order to be able to plan better in the center, a "digital twin" is also to be created, a precisely measured digital model.

This allows, for example, different scenarios of new traffic routing to be simulated and evaluated – better than at the drawing board, anyway.

Another area of ​​application for digitization is smart street lighting, which the city will test as a pilot project with funding.

This can save a lot of energy, and the motion detectors are also sensitive enough that they can "distinguish between a child and a cat," says City Councilor Spengler.

A parking guidance system could also help shorten the tedious search for a parking space.

A warning system for floods is also planned.

However, despite all the enthusiasm for progress, the mayor asks for patience.

“We don't want to turn every corner of life in our city inside out for the sake of progress.

Therefore, the citizens should also be involved at an early, suitable point in time in order to implement really meaningful projects as part of our digitization strategy and to allay fears of contact," says Schindling.

"I'm sure that we can create something together from the diverse topic of digitization if we carefully ensure that the population is taken along and that nobody is left behind."