Joint Press Release

• The German city joins FIWARE Foundation as its 300 member
• By joining FIWARE Foundation, the city aims to further promote its digital scene and build an innovation friendly ecosystem for its local economy

Berlin, October 23, 2019. FIWARE Foundation, the non-profit organization that drives the definition and encourages the adoption of open standards (implemented using open source technologies) to ease the development of smart solutions across is thrilled to welcome on board its newest member, the City of Herne.

Located in North Rhine-Westphalia and with just over 150.000 inhabitants, the city is not short of ambition when it comes to digital. Under its recently established Digitization Unit, the city is gearing up for the challenges of the future. Overseen by the Mayor’s office, the Unit is in charge of attracting a worldwide network of premium partners and startups from the digital economy to support the city’s path towards becoming a Smart City and consequently, part of the smart region “Ruhr”.

Enhancing the quality of life and work for citizens and supporting companies

Pierre Golz, the city’s young Chief Digital Officer is in charge of moving forward the digitization process in the city. Golz has extensive experience in project management, not least in the field of digitization. He is also a part-time lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences NRW for E-government/knowledge management. For the City of Herne, the welfare (of) and opportunities for its citizens and local businesses must be at the forefront of this digital strategy.

“It is important that our citizens feel empowered to help shape the digital Herne, to feel that they are being a key element of it. We see the city of Herne as a real laboratory for digital solutions” said Herne’s Mayor, Dr. Frank Dudda.

“Initially, we are focusing on mobility and energy sector – as acting sustainably is the most important factor for citizens to follow suit – but we will soon move into further areas,” added Pierre Golz, Chief Digital Officer.

FIWARE Foundation members are spread across South America to East Asia

The city of Herne joins several other European cities and companies who are already benefiting from joining the Foundation as gold strategy end-users members. The leading platform for Smart City solutions in Europe and beyond, FIWARE’s long standing work with open source technology and standards has been vital in guiding public and private businesses in their Smart City strategies, based on innovation and collaboration.

“We would like to develop innovative solutions, based on FIWARE-components and its extended global presence. Connecting different sectors is a chance to lift the potential of digitization. We want to bridge the data based barriers, while using the FIWARE-based solutions and the NGSI-Standard. We will strive to ensure that the city ́s digital ecosystem can further grow, as a result of this partnership with FIWARE Foundation. In the future, I would like to support the idea of promoting a smart region “Ruhr”, together with our adjacent cities, based on FIWARE technologies. Furthermore, we would like to share our future proof of concepts for Smart City solutions, based on such technology, concluded Golz.

Commenting on the new membership, Ulrich Ahle, FIWARE Foundation CEO, said:

“We cannot wait to get started with guiding the City of Herne towards accelerating the development of IoT-enabled Smart City solutions within the city. The potential for this thriving city is enormous. The cornerstone of sustainable and inclusive cities, digital technologies can foster high quality, user-centric digital public services for citizens and continuous cross-border public services for entrepreneurs. In turn, the management of public services can be better handled, boosting accountability, trust and economic development.”

Learning from best practices

On October 24, Pierre Golz will join other city CIOs and CDOs from across Europe at the 7th FIWARE Global Summit (at the CityCube Berlin) and share his experience ahead of the digital Unit. The panel will exchange ideas on how cities can deliver their vision of strengthened competition and citizen welfare, by learning from best practices in the private sector and smart cities worldwide.

About FIWARE Foundation:

Founded in 2016 by Atos, Engineering, Orange and Telefónica, FIWARE Foundation is driving the development of smart solutions in a faster, easier, interoperable and affordable way that avoids vendor lock-in scenarios, whilst also nourishing FIWARE as a sustainable business model. And the Foundation does that with the support of a growing global community that shares the vision and efforts of making FIWARE open source technology the best instrument for industries, governments, universities and associations to reach their full potential and scale up their activities to enter new markets and grow their businesses. FIWARE open source technology has been successfully used in the development of IoT platforms – ranging from the Badajoz Council (Spain) to Uruguay’s telecommunications company Antel – to name but a few ways in which FIWARE technologies have been getting cities and regions ready for the smarter future.

Press Contact:

For FIWARE Foundation
Val De Oliveira
valdirene.deoliveira@fiware.org

For the City of Herne
Christoph Huesken
christoph.huesken@herne.de