Not so smart: Regensburg messes up tender for smart city project

Created: 05/10/2022, 17:58

By: Stefan Aigner

Franziska Meier and Georg Stephan Barfuss are to accompany the way from Regensburg to the "Smart City".

© Michael Bothner

Citizen participation should be a top priority on Regensburg's path to becoming a "Smart City".

But the city had to withdraw the invitation to tender for the implementation of this public participation.

Regensburg - Regensburg should become smarter - that is the goal that city politics issued in April 2020.

At that time, an eight-page framework strategy for "Smart City Regensburg" was adopted.

Largely meaningless and full of generalities (“To be smart means to be clever.”), but a start was made to fill this term with life.

In September 2021, economics officer Georg Stephan Barfuss was able to announce good news at a press conference: Regensburg had been awarded the contract for "REGENSBURG_NEXT".

A five-year funding program to advance digitization in the district capital.

A total of 17 million euros are to be spent on this - 65 percent of which will be paid for by the Federal Ministry of the Interior.

The promise of "Smart City Regensburg": Five lighthouse projects and a lot of citizen participation

In addition to the five lighthouse projects - called Co-Creative-Lab, Smart Move, Virtual World Heritage, New Horizons Old Town and Digital Twin of a Residential District - in the first year, the so-called "Phase A", a meaningful and generally understandable Smart City strategy for be developed in Regensburg.

A mandatory prerequisite: The strategy should be “developed on site in an open and participatory process” and use “innovative forms of cooperation within the municipality and with external stakeholders”.

Also to bring the Smart City concept closer to urban society and to fill it with life together.

This is the only way this change can also be shaped socially, it said in September.

But it is precisely this required involvement of the people of Regensburg that has so far fallen by the wayside.

Eight months after the said press conference, the tender failed.

A provider was to be found to accompany the strategy phase and, in order to achieve the main goal, “a Smart develop a city strategy.

"Smart City Regensburg": Tender for public participation withdrawn

"The wrong type of procedure was chosen", according to the short message to participating providers, according to which the tender for "implementation support for the development of the Smart City strategy of the city of Regensburg" was canceled on April 19th.

The time for this phase A - project volume 2.2 million euros - is tight: According to the first call for tenders, the plan was to award the contract in May and then quickly start with "workshop series" on the lighthouse projects and the strategy process by the end of June at the latest to present the first concept papers.

As early as the fourth quarter of 2022, the city council should be presented with the “well-structured, easy to read and generally understandable” strategy paper.

According to the sponsor, i.e. the Federal Ministry of the Interior, phase A should be completed by December 2022.

"Smart City Regensburg": After a failed tender - the schedule is in jeopardy

This ambitious schedule is now no longer feasible.

And that could be at the expense of the broad and intensive public participation demanded by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and which everyone has declared to be necessary.

According to the new tender, which has been running since April 26, a one-off extension of the "strategy phase" by six months is possible, but this requires "an individual decision" that has to be approved by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, according to the tender documents.

"The city of Regensburg will promptly submit an application for the extension of phase A by 6 months," the providers are promised.

“However, approval can only be expected after this service has been commissioned.

Accordingly, the bidder is required to show the necessary openness and flexibility.”

According to a statement by the city of Regensburg, there is no endangerment of the funding program as a whole.

An "interdisciplinary project team" from various departments within the city administration is already working on the implementation of the measures without external support.

A call for tenders for the "Smart Move" project, which involves the use of digital technology for mobility planning, for example for winter service, has already taken place - project volume around 200,000 euros.

"Further tenders are already being prepared."

By the way: Our brand new Regensburg newsletter regularly informs you about all the important stories from the world cultural heritage city and the Upper Palatinate.

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"Smart City Regensburg": "Tighter time frame" for citizen participation

Incidentally, the strategy phase is followed by phase B, designed to last four years and with a project volume of 14.8 million euros, the much larger chunk.

"The prerequisite for this is that the overall strategy for the 'Smart City Regensburg', developed in a participatory manner, must be submitted," says the tender documents.

This participation – citizen participation – will probably be reduced significantly.

However, since the city will only have the necessary external service provider to provide support due to the failed first tender at a "later point in time", according to the city press office, this means that there is now only "a tighter time frame" for this.

Embarrassing behavior in the administration of the city of Regensburg.