Se pone en marcha la ciudad del futuro
Ya está decidido: Friedrichshafen será la primera T-City de Alemania. T-Systems adopta un papel fundamental en la creación de servicios orientados al ciudadano.
Whether it’s a tax return, extending your ID card or registering a new place of residence – in future, the general public will increasingly be able to dispense with visits to the authorities, thanks to the Internet and mobile networks. They will be able to communicate with the administrative staff from their own homes. And if you still happen to need to go into the office, the authorities will offer an all-round service at a networked service desk.
Germany’s municipalities are discovering service – and they are relying on sophisticated information and communications technology (ICT) solutions. The key to their success is networking. Departments and administrative bodies in the public administration that were once separate are now interconnected via a standard infrastructure.
Deutsche Telekom has been running an ideas competition that will now make the city of the future a reality. T-City is the name of the Europe-wide one-off project in which 52 municipalities with up to 100,000 inhabitants have taken part. The decision has been made: The best idea was submitted by Friedrichshafen – the jury has nominated the town as Germany’s T-City. Deutsche Telekom will invest up to €35 million in non-monetary, monetary and human resources for the high-speed broadband infrastructure, i.e. mobile and fixed networks, and up to €80 million in the same resources for individual projects. At the same time, Public Private Partnerships will open up entirely new business models for the municipalities.
“Friedrichshafen will use our ICT infrastructure to set up a range of new services,” says René Obermann, Chief Executive Officer of Deutsche Telekom. “They will ensure increased citizen participation and less bureaucracy.” The projects concern all of the relevant aspects of public life. T-Systems will provide a large percentage of the necessary services.
The possibilities that an ICT infrastructure such as the high-speed data network of Deutsche Telekom has to offer a municipality are practically limitless: Physicians check the health status of their patients by mobile telephony. The citizen’s e-ticket can be used for all local cultural and sports events – booked and billed via the mobile network. Car dealers in the city are linked directly to insurance companies and the motor vehicle registration office enabling them to save their customers extra trips and waiting time. The police and fire service communicate quickly and directly.
With T-City, T‑Systems is positioned as Germany’s leading service provider for public authorities and for the e-Government action plan, which the EU Commission passed recently. It requires that all citizens and companies in the Union have access to electronic public services using secure and user-friendly options by the year 2010. “In the city that won the competition, we will demonstrate how we can use our competence and expertise to implement the EU guidelines in public administration right away,” said Bernhard Bresonik, Vice President of the Public Sector division at T-Systems.
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