In the most recent meeting, the market town council in Zell am Main approved the commissioning of a municipal app. This is intended to create a new possibility for informing citizens in real time.
Johannes Vollnhals was connected digitally for this agenda item. The 21-year-old is the managing director of a software development company in the Ingolstadt area. Vollnhals had already roughly outlined his app to the community representatives in Zell at the end of May. In the future, the application for the smartphone should function in parallel with analog information channels such as the newsletter or the website. The information path between citizens and administration should be shortened insofar as the app also works with push messages. In this way, information in emergencies or urgent news can reach users in real time. Vollnhals sees this as a new pillar of citizen information, which, in contrast to the website and the newsletter, approaches the citizen on its own.
Timetables can also be called up
In order for the app to be used by many people in Zell, it should offer a wide range of services. “My aim is always to have as much added value as possible in an app,” explains Vollnhals. The Zell-am-Main app should therefore not only offer a citizen service, a waste disposal plan or information about clubs in addition to the “Current news from the town hall”. In the “Bus and Train” section, timetables for all public transport in Bavaria can be called up and fuel prices can also be compared under “Mobility”.
There are also a few other implementations that can be discussed depending on the municipality’s wishes. “We don’t have a fixed kit for the app. Each community can come to us with individual ideas about the range of functions,” says Vollnhals. He and his team have now sold their municipal apps to over 100 municipalities, including Gaukönigshofen in the Würzburg district.
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“We’re not about surveillance”
Overall, the council was very pleased with the presentation. Nevertheless, critical questions also arose. Jessica Hecht (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) expressed concern about the private information that can be collected using the app. “The wealth of data that is obtained here is incredible,” said Hecht. Vollnhals then recalled his goal of digitizing the communities in Bavaria, not monitoring them: “We only track the downloads of our app. We are concerned with informing citizens and not with monitoring.” Vollnhals sees no competition with the district app, which is currently being developed and, according to Hecht, will definitely come onto the market. He assumes that the citizens of Zell would be more likely to use the more individual community app than a district app.
The software developer is aware that municipalities outsource their communication through the app and thus have to make themselves dependent. As for the price, he was able to show a contractual clause from his company that states that the monthly fee for the app may not increase by more than two percent even in times of inflation. The costs for the Zell-am-Main app amount to a one-off investment of around 3963 euros plus monthly costs of around 291 euros. Both the administration and the municipal council rated this investment as comparatively cheap.
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