For this reason, the City of Bonn is expressly committed to digital rights and has joined the "Cities for Digital Rights" Alliance, thereby implementing a resolution of the City Council.
The Alliance advocates five principles:
- Universal and equal access to the Internet and the development of digital skills
- Privacy, data protection and security
- Transparency, accountability and non-discrimination of data, content and algorithms
- Participatory democracy, diversity and inclusion
- Open and ethical standards for digital services
"Digital solutions are an important building block for sustainable cities of the future. Citizens expect cities and municipalities to use new technologies - on the one hand for sustainable simplifications in everyday life, and on the other hand for more and better accessible municipal services," says Mayor Katja Dörner.
The Alliance currently includes around 54 cities worldwide, ranging from Amman in Jordan to the German cities of Berlin, Leipzig and Munich, and New York in the USA. Dr. Ulrich Ziegenhagen from Bonn's Economic Development Department and Chief Digital Officer Friedrich Fuß are pleased to have joined the network, which was realized on the initiative of the Council, and to contribute topics that are important to Bonn in the future, but also to learn from the experiences of other Alliance cities in the long term.
"The goal of the alliance is the protection, promotion and observance of human rights on the Internet in the local as well as global context. In a city, this means removing obstacles that stand in the way of using technological opportunities and providing trustworthy and secure digital services and infrastructures that support citizens*," says Friedrich Fuß, the CDO of the City of Bonn.
"Digitization and the associated transformation in all areas of life are among the greatest design tasks. The digitization strategy is not a self-contained endeavor limited to specific projects. Rather, it is an ongoing, permanent process in which the entire administration of the City of Bonn is involved," adds Ulrich Ziegenhagen, Deputy Head of the Economic Development Department of the City of Bonn.
A first meeting within the network is planned for this fall. A personal exchange with members of the network will take place at the Smart City World Congress in Barcelona in mid-November 2022, which will be attended by international site development representatives from the Economic Development Department.
The Cities for Digital Rights Alliance
In order to assert and protect the same rights online that people have offline, the Cities for Digital Rights Alliance was launched. Founded in 2018 by the three cities of Amsterdam, Barcelona and New York City, the Alliance now includes almost 50 cities worldwide. Three German cities Berlin, Munich and Leipzig are members as well. Bonn is thus the fourth German city and the first from the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia to join the Alliance.
Further information is available at: https://citiesfordigitalrights.org/city/bonn (opens in a new tab)