Every year, the nationwide Digital Day honors projects that particularly promote digital participation and digital engagement among citizens and thus make digital change tangible and accessible.
aconium is committed to promoting digital education and demonstrating opportunities for all people and population groups to participate in the digital transformation. This is why aconium GmbH once again supported the “Prize for Digital Coexistence” of the “Digital for All” initiative on the occasion of Digital Day on June 24, 2022.
Last year, the Lower Saxony project team of the Mitwirk-O-Mat was able to win the 10,000 euro prize in the “Digital Engagement” category. The app primarily helps to connect citizens with personalized offers to associations and organizations in the region.
On June 24, the prize for “Digital Togetherness” will once again be awarded as part of the nationwide Digital Day. As part of our journey into the future, we made a detour to Lüneburg and asked last year’s winning team how they felt about the award and the time afterwards.
A year ago, you won in this category. What has happened to you since then?
The media presence generated by the award naturally generated a lot of interest. In September/October, the Mitwirk-O-Mats were launched for the first time in Gütersloh and Nuremberg. We then had the task of finding a business form so that we could offer and operate the Mitwirk-O-Mats in a legally compliant manner.
Instead of founding something new, we merged with the wechange cooperative, which is oriented towards the common good and also operates at the interface between civil society, digitalization and sustainability. This has made a lot of things easier for us and saved us a lot of bureaucracy.
We were also able to hire Ekaterina, our first full-time employee, with the help of the prize money. We also continued to professionalize our public relations work, our product and, of course, our internal processes.
At the same time, we worked with the Kiel Volunteer Agency on a Participation-O-Mat for the state capital, which was launched in February. And we are in constant contact with local authorities, volunteer agencies and other stakeholders to drive forward scaling.
After the award ceremony, you announced that you would “get serious” and undertake the scaling, professionalization and technical development of the app. What experiences have you been able to draw from the previous member cities that will help with the further development of the Mitwirk-O-Mat?
We have gained a lot of experience in how we can design the process for creating and maintaining a new Participation-O-Mat so that we save our partner municipalities and volunteer agencies as much work as possible.
We have also realized that word-of-mouth is extremely important for our growth. The exchange with individual small municipalities and volunteer agencies is valuable, but sometimes also tedious, which is why we work with networks and umbrella organizations through which the Mitwirk-O-Mat could be implemented directly for an entire region or even a whole federal state.
We have also collected specific wishes for improving the Mitwirk-O-Mat and created concepts from these. We are currently waiting for funding to implement these.
Is the project still run on a voluntary basis or is there a full-time position?
Our project is run partly on a voluntary basis and partly on a full-time basis. Ekaterina has been supporting me in the areas of public relations and customer care since October.
Dare to look ahead: What are the next planned steps, or what is your next big goal?
A major funding project is to be carried out this year, including numerous new Mitwirk-O-Mats and technical enhancements. Accompanying research will also be carried out to measure the impact of the Mitwirk-O-Mat.
We have also given some initial thought to how we can get a foot in the door in other European countries.