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Communities: with open-source software towards a vivacious civil society

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Abstract

Local communities in Germany are under great pressure to modernize their services: high depth rate, increasing expectations concerning the quality of the services, socio-demographic change, environmental issues, regional competition—to name only a few of the challenges. In a society based on a federal structure and the principle of subsidiarity, it is almost natural to demand a vivid community with active citizens. Today, with the advent of social media and the new channels of communication, the question is how to leverage the benefits of this concept for local issues. More precise: How can the competence of the citizens be activated to make conditions of living in the neighbourhoods more attractive? In this paper, we discuss technical requirements for an open government. The SAGA standard of the Federal German Government strongly supports the notion of open-source software. With OpenSAGA, we introduce a new, performant and SAGA-compliant framework for the implementation of web applications for e-Government. Consequently, OpenSAGA is the platform for an OpenGovernment Suite, an extended prototype for affordable and interoperable open government solutions.

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Correspondence to Norbert Jesse.

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Jesse, N. Communities: with open-source software towards a vivacious civil society. AI & Soc 31, 361–370 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-015-0595-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-015-0595-6

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