Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg: Public participation and information – digitalisation of administrative services for participation and provision of plans in a spatial planning context (DE0041)

What is the public problem that the commitment will address? Citizens are affected by spatial planning at many different levels directly or indirectly, and would like to play a larger part in the planning process. The plans that are drawn up are: Land development plans at Land level, regional plans at regional level, and land use plans (both preparatory and binding) at municipal level. There is also a planning approval procedure, which is a specific administrative process that determines whether projects and infrastruc-ture measures that impact significantly on land use may be carried out at all. Statutory reg-ulations govern public participation in the legislative process for specialist laws, specifically the Federal Building Code (Baugesetzbuch), the Federal Spatial Planning Act (Raumord-nungsgesetz) and the Administrative Procedure Act (Verwaltungsverfahrensgesetz).Citizens are affected by these planning procedures in different ways. In Germany, the op-portunity to have a say is a fundamental element of public participation. In part in view of the complexity of the procedures concerned, to date it has not always been offered digitally. The Online Access Act (Onlinezugangsgesetz, OZG) states that all administrative services must now be offered in fully digital form by the end of 2022.Enormous potential exists to digitalise not only participation in planning procedures, but also the plans themselves, whether preparatory or final. These two services are thus very important in the context of OZG implementation.

What is the commitment?The aim of the implementation project is to develop software solutions, known as “bench-mark implementations”, that provide optimum digital support to both the participation process for the production of spatial plans, and the provision of the plans themselves, whether preparatory or final. Existing solutions, some of which are already in use, are to serve as a model for development.The software products are to be designed according to the “one for all” principle in such a way that they can subsequently be made available to interested Länder and local governments for their own use. Alongside design and implementation, the scalability of these software solutions is thus particularly important.8.1 Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg: Public participation and infor-mation – digitalisation of administrative services for participation and provision of plans in a spatial planning context

How will the commitment contribute to solving the public problem?Those in charge of planning must be given the facility to conduct participation processes, and provide the plans themselves, in digital form. In smaller municipalities in particular, the high cost and other expense associated with purchasing or producing, and running, the relevant software solutions is often a problem. The ability to benefit from jointly developed software as a secondary user can enable planning offices to meet the requirements of the OZG in full.

Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values?• Transparency: Digitalised processes and the proactive provision of planning data give citizens more comprehensive information on planning initiatives, enables them to track decision-making paths and gives them access to the plans themselves, thereby improving transparency about the actions of their local governments.• Participation: Direct, low-barrier opportunities to participate in the process can increase both the acceptance and the quality of the planning outcome overall.• Technology and innovation for open access and accountability: Local applications and central solutions and platforms should communicate and exchange messages with the aid of standardised, machine-readable data exchange formats that are manufacturer-independent. Such standards are already in development. As part of the project they are to be modified in line with the needs of the various types of procedure.

Additional information The public participation and information implementation project is part of the OZG’s “Construction and housing” cluster, and is supported under the economic stimulus package for OZG implementation projects.

Milestones Start Date Implementation by Milestone 1: Concept August 2020 July 2021 Milestone 2: Benchmark implementation December 2020 February 2022 Release of an application prototype (the minimum viable product, MVP) November 2021 Milestone 3: One-for-all solution January 2022 August 2022

Action Plan Review

Commitment 8.1 (Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg): Digitalisation of administrative services for participation and provision of plans in spatial planning