1st place for district in international e-government competition

With its vaccination follow-up platform, the district of Waldeck-Frankenberg took first place in the international e-government competition. The award in the category "Best contribution to short-term crisis management" was ceremoniously presented yesterday in Berlin. In addition to this, the district made it to fourth place in the public ranking of the competition, which awards digital innovations in public administrations.

"Technologically clever solution"

Already with its nomination to the finals of the competition, which is under the auspices of the Federal Chancellery, the district prevailed against around 80 other applications. In the final, it achieved one of two first places in its category. "We were impressed by the district of Waldeck-Frankenberg, which found a solution in a crazy amount of time to prevent vaccine doses from expiring, and which was also so technologically clever that it can have imitative effects in other fields," said jury member Prof. Dr. Lück Schneider from the Berlin School of Economics and Law in her laudatory speech.

"Acted quickly and passionately"

"These particular projects have shown what this stress test means for administrations and how quickly and passionately action was taken," also emphasises Jonas Rahe from the IT company Cisco, which organised the competition together with the consulting service provider BearingPoint. Second first place went to the Swiss Federal Offices for Information Technology and Telecommunications and Health.

The district had to find a quick and innovative solution in April when it had to reallocate spontaneously cancelled or unattended appointments at the vaccination centre in Korbach at very short notice. Within a few hours, the vaccine doses had to be redistributed - at that time still according to the applicable prioritisation groups. The goal: No vaccine dose was to go to waste! With the digital vaccination backlog platform, the district achieved the goal it had set itself - and spontaneously reallocated remaining vaccine doses within a few hours every day. To achieve this, the interdisciplinary project team convened at short notice around digitalisation project manager Nastasia Sluzalek, process manager Oliver Merhof, press office employee Tanja Reitmaier, press officer Ann-Katrin Heimbuchner as well as vaccination centre manager Gerhard Biederbick and his deputy Bernd Berghöfer created an online process with the help of the Hessian digitalisation platform that made it possible to react quickly, innovatively and flexibly to the daily situation and the corresponding needs.

District Administrator: "Brilliant placement"

"I am proud that my team of innovative and extremely committed young employees has managed to achieve such a brilliant ranking in the international digitalisation competition," says District Administrator Dr Reinhard Kubat, delighted about the extraordinary success of his administration. "For an even better citizen service and also to comply with the online access law by the end of 2022, we already set out on our way several years ago and established a sustainable strategy. We are currently implementing this strategy step by step in order to manage these processes systematically. The award is also a confirmation of the work we have been doing in this area for years." A big thank you also goes to the people of Waldeck-Frankenberg, who voted in large numbers online for the district as the winner of the fourth public award. "We accept the awards symbolically for all those who are working in the fight against the Corona pandemic - everywhere, but especially for our people in Waldeck-Frankenberg."

Innovative and special

What was innovative and special about the award-winning project was that it was implemented within a few days, was immediately successful and enabled direct contact with citizens through a low-threshold and additional registration channel for vaccination against the coronavirus. Feedback from the population was also immediately incorporated into the optimisation of the application. The jury was pleased with the agile and interdisciplinary cooperation of the specialised services and the effective, digitally supported and unbureaucratic solution.