Smart City App: My city’s services from A to Z

Can that be true? Quit spending ages waiting at the public office but instead calling up information about the city and leisure tips right from where I'm standing? Yes, that's possible. With the "Citykey" smart city app.

We live in a time and a country with so much prosperity, technology and well-organized communal life: The average household naturally includes a PC, a tablet, a smartphone. We organize our family, friends and appointments via messenger app. We are shopping online. We connect digitally to concerts on the other side of the world. But in my immediate environment - I'm talking about my house on my street in my city - I encounter many, really many forms on paper for administrative procedures. The mailman brings the referendum to sign. I read the calendar of events in the printed magazine. I use countless more or less well-designed, often insecure apps with info about what my city and region offer. In 2021. Yes, that's how it is. Still. Does it have to be like that?!

In other words, what do I want?

I want to do everything via smartphone: App instead of office. I want to be reminded when I have to put out the plastic waste. I want to have a digital say in the citizens' survey on the controversial residential development. I want to apply digitally for a parking permit for residents. When I'm out and about, I need information about the places of interest nearby. The app can find me. Regardless of whether I'm in the city as a citizen, commuter or tourist. This also means that the app has to accompany me fluently when I drive from the Ruhr area to Bonn. Of course, I also want to think beyond the end of my nose. Which event in the region sounds interesting? Very important: I don't want to have to search around. The app should be tailored to my personal user behavior and be easy to use. By the way, whatever helps me also helps the administration - no more paperwork and multiple, error-prone data entry.

"Citykey" - that's the name of the app for the smart city.

The majority of people are not satisfied with digital government services. 56 percent of citizens are not content with the online services offered by public authorities. The digital association Bitkom (note: info in German) is calling for consistent digitization of public administration. By law, everyone in Germany should be able to access 600 government services by the end of 2022. Citykey makes life easier for me, as well as for the authorities and the service providers in the city. More than 10 cities in Germany are already testing the app. The app relies on dynamic, location-based services. Users configure the content according to their personal interests. The photo show explains what it can do.

At the start of Citykey, the app offers eight services related to the "Digital City Hall": digital forms, a service for making appointments and citizen surveys, a waste planner and a defects report tool. Plus local news and events and, of course, information on places of interest. Cities can add other services as desired, such as timetables or online shops of local stores.

Appointments for the public office can be booked directly in the app. There is a function for an overview of all appointments and a detailed view with the time and place as well as the documents that need to be brought along. If there are any changes, a message is sent to the smartphone and the appointment can be transferred to the personal calendar. Via QR code, everyone can access the most important information.

For more citizen involvement and transparency, cities want to provide quick and current news from the council and city administration - targeted according to the interests of the citizens. On the app's news page, important messages can be highlighted. Anyone who wants to can send the news to their contacts via a share function.

Events are at the heart of a lively urban community. In the city calendar, events can be selected by category and date. Anyone interested in an event can mark the date and transfer it to their personal calendar or share it with friends.

Every city knows best what characterizes it and what interesting places there are on its map. With this "points of interest" function of the app, cities can guide their visitors and citizens to the local attractions - with stories instead of just location data.

A deep pothole in the road, a crooked guardrail, a defective street light - citizens often see defects and dangers and don't know where to report them. With the defect reporter, all that is needed is a photo from a mobile phone with the geodata. The municipal operations can repair the defect directly and provide feedback.

In addition to the services related to the "Digital City Hall", the app offers a kind of marketplace. The municipalities decide which services they want to integrate into this platform with partners: A module with a wine map on the Moselle is just as possible as hiking maps in Bavaria. Companies such as local merchants can offer their services. This secures their existence and makes the city attractive as a business location.

What do I care about the technology behind it...?

Of course, the technical aspects of the smart city app are important to me. After all, I don't want to fall for the next data dump or rely on a throwaway: Citykey runs on smartphones with Google Android or Apple iOS operating systems and with all mobile carriers. The platform uses open source standards. Furthermore, it is hosted by Telekom in accordance with German data protection requirements. The app can be expanded according to the wishes of the cities. Citizens, city representatives and technology experts together designed and tested services for the app. Thanks to the open, expandable platform, both smaller municipalities with tighter budgets and financially strong cities benefit from the app. From mid-2021, it will be officially available in the app stores, free of charge.

I'm looking forward to it. It will make my everyday life easier.

More on Smart City and the digitization of cities and regions:
Special Smart City
Telekom SmartCity