Four German organisations have formed a joint venture to help cities transform their services digitally.

DKSR, or Daten-Kompetenzzentrum für Städte und Regionen (Competence Center for Cities and Regions), was set up by Fraunhofer Morgenstadt Initiative, Deutsche Telekom, Urban Software Institute and Axxessio to accompany municipalities in their data-driven transformation.

DKSR is using an open-source approach to help municipalities find municipal data, retrieve it in a structured way and share it securely.

The four partners, together with municipalities, have developed a platform they see as the basis for the city of the future. The open-source platform should guarantee data sovereignty, while ensuring further development and exchange on best practices in the Morgenstadt Urban Data Community.

“At Fraunhofer, we work on ways to use knowledge from data for municipalities, the citizens and business,” said Wilhelm Bauer, executive director of Fraunhofer IAO. “And often, as is the case here, start-ups with established companies are a way of successfully transferring this knowledge.”

Goodarz Mahbobi, CEO of Axxessio and originator of the joint initiative, added: “Digital transformation and the associated data sovereignty in municipalities is a challenge that is so complex that it cannot be solved by one company alone. Rather, it requires a symbiosis of various specialist competencies. These are bundled in DKSR.”

Clean air in cities, networked mobility, user-centric administrative services, balancing out fluctuating use of renewable energies and rapid responses to crises are all features of a sustainable and liveable city and will only be possible with digital technology. But the individual needs and use cases of municipalities, cities and regions require individual options. The more digital services are implemented, the greater the need for an open data platform to aggregate, harmonise and integrate data sets from different systems. In the process, municipal administrations have to make many decisions regarding technical infrastructure, provider selection, data organisation and security.

Through DKSR, cities and regions can access standardised technology and a large ecosystem of quality-assured providers. To do this, DKSR itself does not use the data, nor does it offer its own applications. It works with all providers for digital smart cities according to transparent rules. Applications are then made available to all cities and municipalities in an open ecosystem.

“Openness is the basis for municipal data platforms,” said Lutz Heuser, CEO of Urban Software Institute. “Full Fiware compatibility and the use of open standards in accordance with Din 91357 ensure that DKSR is compatible and interoperable with all current systems. With an embedded IDS standard, this is the world’s first open source data platform that already has fully integrated the technology for implementing municipal data sovereignty.

Building on the Fraunhofer Morgenstadt network, the DKSR’s Morgenstadt Urban Data Community offers a lively exchange of information for joint further development and the exchange of data models and use cases. This offers advantages for cities and regions as they can easily adopt data-based applications and models via plug and play. Events and dedicated communication channels promote direct peer-to-peer exchanges.

The joint development effort can also reduce costs. In addition, the community can address queries for the DKSR.

“We are convinced that shaping the shared space of the city can also only be achieved together and in dialogue,” said Michael Frank, responsible for smart cities at Deutsche Telekom. “In addition to networks and communities for dialogue, open urban data platforms as a basic municipal infrastructure will make an important contribution to success.”

Alanus von Radecki, an expert from the Morgenstadt Initiative, is taking over the management of the DKSR. He was a co-founder and longstanding head of the Morgenstadt innovation network and has built up a large network of innovation drivers in municipalities, research and industry. As managing director of DKSR, he brings the results from numerous innovation and pilot projects into broad application for cities and regions in Germany and throughout Europe.