Uwe Brandl, first vice president of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, said on behalf of the Federal Association of Municipal Associations: “Cities and municipalities are under extreme pressure during the pandemic. Offices and authorities have proven their ability to act and have maintained their operations using digital technologies. Now it is important to fully exploit the potential of digitalization. Digital and efficient municipalities can make life easier for citizens as well as companies and craft businesses – with fast processes and intuitive contact with authorities via app or online.
It is crucial that everyone benefits from them. Digital services are an essential building block for equal living conditions. To achieve this, we need offers that are highly user-friendly as well as employees with high levels of digital skills. We expect support from the federal and state governments in the necessary training and further education offers. As an association of cities and municipalities, we are calling for the establishment of a ‘digitalization competence center’ for municipalities that organizes training offers, advises municipalities and supports them in their implementation projects. This is an investment in the future of our country.”
Digital technologies with high importance for all areas of life
The use of digital technologies is considered to be of great importance in almost all areas of life, especially for maintaining social contacts (85 percent). For more than half of the population, digital technologies are also very or fairly important in the areas of health and prevention (59 percent), education (52 percent), work (51 percent) and household (50 percent).
For 80 percent, they make life easier and enable business owner database comprehensive access to relevant information (69 percent). Nevertheless, 87 percent of respondents also believe that not all areas of life need to be digitized. In addition, 70 percent fear that the state will gain knowledge about them through digital technologies. More than half (55 percent) are also afraid that strangers could gain insight into their private lives.
Population rates digital competence as “satisfactory”
On average, Germans rate their digital skills as satisfactory this state law empowers consumers to (3.1) on a school grading scale. This means that the grade has risen slightly compared to the previous year (3.3). The best grades were given by 16- to 29-year-olds and 30- to 49-year-olds (2.6 each), while those over 75 (4.8) scored the worst.
However, there are fundamental problems with the use of digital technologies in all age groups: 76
percent of those surveyed believe they are able to use technical devices as desired. 61 percent can
classify error messages and respond to them. Conversely, this means that almost a quarter cannot use technical devices as desired, and more than a third fail due to error messages.
Second nationwide day of action for digital participation
In order to promote digital participation across all age atbdirectory groups, Digital Day will take place
for the second time on June 18, 2021. Digital Day is intended to bring people across Germany
together around digital topics and offers a platform to shed light on various aspects of digitalization,
discuss opportunities and challenges, and initiate a broad social dialogue. At
digitaltag.eu/aktionslandkarte, interested parties can choose from more than 1,500 online campaigns
and in-person events – from seminars and live streams to advice, virtual tours and tutorials to
hackathons. The program can be filtered by topic categories and searched in full text.
The Digital Day is organized by the “Digital for All” initiative, which brings together 27 organizations
from the fields of civil society, culture, science, business, welfare and the public sector.
Digital Day will be accompanied by an all-day live stream at digitaltag.eu. The official opening will
take place at 8:30 a.m. with Minister of State for Digital Affairs Dorothee Bär. Throughout the day,
moderated discussions with high-ranking representatives of the partner organizations of the “Digital
for All” initiative will be broadcast in the live stream.
On the occasion of Digital Day, the “Prize for Digital Togetherness”, endowed with 20,000 euros, will
be awarded in two categories (digital participation and digital engagement). The winners will be
announced on June 16, 2021 and will introduce themselves and their projects at the official opening.
