Digital Agency Thuringia: The importance of village apps for rural areas

The creation of reliable and resilient village structures is essential not only to preserve rural regions as attractive and future-oriented living spaces, but also to further develop them in terms of social and economic participation on a par with urban areas. The use of village apps can be an important building block for this, as the Digital Agency Thuringia points out in a current article.

The use of village apps can improve the quality of life and sense of community in rural communities. In particular, promoting the regional economy and culture are important factors in achieving this. Village apps are crucial as they include features that support local farmers and markets in selling products. Such a feature not only contributes to economic development, but also emphasizes the uniqueness and diversity of regional culture.

Village apps can make a significant positive contribution to the digital transformation of villages, as numerous examples from across Germany have already shown. One pioneer in the internal and external networking of villagers, institutions and businesses is the Rhineland-Palatinate municipality of Betzdorf-Gebhardshain. As early as 2015, a pilot project of the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE Kaiserslautern, the Ministry of the Interior and for Sport and the Rhineland-Palatinate Development Agency launched the joint project “Digital Villages”. Among other things, a local online marketplace was opened to offer local goods a joint trading platform and thus strengthen local trade. Various other modules were developed from this pilot project, including “DorfNews”. This is a local online portal with the aim of creating a bulletin board for citizens, associations and administration in village communities.

In addition, there is the “DorfFunk”, a local communication center based on an app that enables citizens to get in direct contact with the administration and with each other to exchange concerns, wishes and news. The project has been so well received by the local population that it has now been transferred to a large number of other village communities and is also repeatedly used as a best-practice example of digital transformation in rural areas, for example in September of this year at the regional network conference of the Forum Leine-Weser.