Part of Zio: Dr. Thorsten Schüler (member of the supervisory board) and the two managing directors Ludwig Beck and Sven Neumann (from left) have been working on the inter-municipal IT company for several months. © Andrea Jaksch
In the future, the newly founded Zio GmbH will take care of the IT of the city of Starnberg, five municipalities and a municipal water supplier. Bundled power is the be-all and end-all. At the helm are two men who are full of energy: Ludwig Beck and Sven Neumann.
Starnberg/Landkreis – Bundled IT competence for Lake Starnberg and the municipality of Andechs, one contact person and a common system for all shareholders: This is the concept of the newly founded Zio GmbH (Central Information Technology Organization). It is to take over almost the entire IT area of the city of Starnberg, the municipalities of Andechs, Berg, Feldafing, Pöcking and Tutzing as well as the joint municipal company for the drinking water supply of the municipalities of Feldafing and Pöcking. At a press conference on Thursday, the two managing directors Ludwig Beck and Sven Neumann presented their "baby", as they call Zio, in detail.
"We shareholders are currently faced with the problem that we either do not have our own IT department and are exclusively dependent on external service providers or do not have sufficient qualified personnel capacities to be able to deal with the existing challenges," said Starnberg's mayor Patrick Janik. From this, Beck (Managing Director of the City of Starnberg) and Neumann (Managing Director of the Municipality of Pöcking) developed the idea of founding a new company about one and a half years ago.
"The demands in the IT sector are getting higher and higher, the subject matter is becoming more and more complex," says Neumann. "In order for us to keep pace with developments and continue to enable citizen orientation, a new form of cooperation was needed. After we had told our colleagues about the idea of an IT company, interested parties were on board very quickly enough to initiate the process of founding the company," adds Beck.
Specifically, Zio will take on these tasks for the municipalities and the municipal company: development and provision of IT infrastructure such as software, hardware, cloud services and server infrastructure as well as the provision of IT services such as support, maintenance, purchasing, consulting and IT security management. In addition, the approximately 730 employees who will soon be supported by Zio will also be trained in the area of IT.
"Our aim is to always be up to date and to give the shareholders a good feeling," says Neumann. "Zio is successful when no one complains," adds Ludwig. The two have put many evenings and weekends into their project over the past few months. "The citizen will not notice any change," Beck emphasizes.
In addition to the two managing directors, another 18 people are to work at Zio. Five employees will be taken over by the city of Starnberg. "We're currently conducting job interviews," Neumann explains. The job advertisements can be found on the www.zio-it.de website. "The job is secure and is paid above the standard pay scale," Beck emphasizes. It is likely that Zio will have its headquarters in Pöcking. Spaces have already been found. "However, the lease has not yet been signed," says Neumann.
The final development of the IT operating concept is currently underway. IT operations start after the operational concept has been created. The city of Starnberg will start as a pilot later this year. From January 2024, the other shareholders are to be added. "The interest from other municipalities in the district is there, but we said we'd start small," says Sven Neumann. "If everything is in place, we will be able to take on more shareholders. However, this is more of a medium-term goal," explains Ludwig Beck.
