Dr Dreyer,
President Ilves,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure to welcome you here on behalf of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.
We are truly honoured to have you, President Ilves and Minister Palo, as our guests in this city.
As a venue, we claim to be the perfect setting for this business event. As you may know, Hamburg aims at developing digital strengths similar to those Estonia already has. However, at the moment we are far from the Estonian level of digitization and industry 4.0.
On the other hand, Hamburg is often referred to as the gateway to the world.
This holds true in the face of current developments. Our city is the most dynamic and innovative business location far beyond the northern part of Germany.
So we do have something to speak in our favour. And to ensure that Hamburg will continue to hold this position and, in addition to its economic power, will also be able to increase its citizens quality of life, we intend to approach digitalization as an opportunity and to tap its potentials for companies and people.
After all, some amazing things are already happening in Hamburg. To bundle these processes, coordinate them, and harness synergies, we are currently setting up a control centre for the digital city in the Senate Chancellery. It is designed to provide a better overview of the numerous projects and processes.
With our partners from the MIT Media Lab and various universities in Hamburg, we also want to establish a Digital City Science Lab. This Lab will perform interdisciplinary urban research and investigate future development strategies.
If we tackle this correctly, we will be able with the help of new technologies to make this large and modern city even more pleasant to live in and economically more powerful.
We are thus now faced with the task of digitizing links of the administration with the citizens, as well as our public infrastructure. At the same time, this gives us an opportunity to open up innovation areas to companies, in which they can have a go at new options and technologies and develop them to market readiness in pilot projects. In the final analysis, our objective is always that of using technology to improve the quality of our services and to use resources more efficiently. This applies to administration, business, transportation, science, research, education and apprenticeships, energy and healthcare, as well as other areas of public life.
A holistic approach to these topics and the creation of networked solutions will be particularly suitable for providing the potential for greater economic power and quality of life in the digital city.
This is why the Senate intends to create a climate throughout the city in which Hamburg can develop into a laboratory of digital modernity.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
So, whilst admiring Estonia´s prominence, let me give you an idea of some of the plans and projects that are already being pursued in digital Hamburg.
The movement to digitize is pioneered by our port. It represents one innovation motor of Hamburg, as a smartPORT, including a Port Monitor. This enables the Real Time Monitoring of ships, construction sites, water levels, bridge heights, etc.
The leading role of our port is highlighted by the fact that we are hosting the World Ports Conference in early June, City of Hamburg Calling at the smart port. 1,000 port experts from all over the world are expected to attend this event.
One petty but thoroughly helpful example of the smartPORT is the development of an app for truck drivers coming to our port. The app informs them about the best routes, departure times, available parking facilities and current delays of the ships they serve.
We intend to make similar apps available for the general public in the near future. Potentially this can lead to, in a way, coordinating flows of goods and traffic with the help of appropriate data-driven applications. This will facilitate the increasingly efficient use of the port area, which is limited by its inner-city location. And it will produce advantages for the port operations and the environment.
Another concept from Hamburg which even impressed visitors from MIT and Harvard is the Hamburg Open Online University. It was developed jointly by the state universities located here, enabling them to further evolve their possibilities for teaching and learning in the digital context as well. In contrast to massive open online courses with huge participation but even larger dropout rates, it will offer knowledge resources, a user data base for locating suitable partners, and a task data base.
In addition, the Hamburg Open Online University will not only be available to students, but to other interested people as well. The platform developed for them will not only transfer conventional forms of teaching and learning to the digital world, but will also pursue a new didactic approach. It is tailored to the learners, takes advantages of the opportunities provided by networking and exchange, and opens up new ways of gaining knowledge with the help of concrete assignments and problems.
Two other special projects are transparency and our eCulture Agenda 2020.
Our website transparenz.hamburg.de makes Hamburg avant-garde in Germany for open government, as this unique site makes decisions, contracts, reviews, etc., available to the public. This enables everybody to participate in decision-making processes and be informed about everything that is about to happen politically well, almost whether it be in regard to the budget or traffic management.
The Senates eCulture Agenda 2020 covers very diverse projects. There is the Kulturpunkte app, where you can obtain information on more than 400 institutions, objects and monuments; eFoto Hamburg, a virtual image archive which is set up with the help of the monument protection authority´s database, as well as historic image databases of history workshops; and eMuseum, which will enrich museum experiences with the help of digital techniques to name but a few.
Last but not least: e-Government, of course, must be another shining light of the digital city. More and more administrative matters will be seen to online, while citizens and companies will merely face a SPOC, a single point of contact, which will remain the same, be it school information or the electronic trade register.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
those of you who are from Estonia or, from the future, if I may quote President Ilves again like I did yesterday they are likely to see that today, in Hamburg, we are far from what people, admiringly, call E-Estonia. Your country has already embarked on the fundamental right of free internet access. All public duties are organized digitally, and most are carried out online, making the Estonian administration far more efficient as to both time and money. Furthermore, Estonian citizens can basically monitor their government in real time, enabling an additional level of citizen participation.
And they have dignified universities and beautiful places like Tallinn not forgetting their lakes and their famous baltic beaches. After all, some leisure time has still got to be spent outdoors, far from computers, hasn´t it?
However, in order to not have to start from scratch, our city looks forward to inquiring about E-Estonia and its path toward its current status as an information age country. Are there any aspects we especially need to consider in order to achieve joint growth and prosperity? How can we further strengthen the cooperation between Hamburg and Estonia?
Let me conclude my questions at this point. I wish you very fruitful discussions, as well as enriching insights about Europe´s digital state of mind. We will undoubtedly benefit from one another, and Hamburg looks forward to cooperating further in the future in matters regarding bits and bytes, as well as overarching topics concerning the Baltic Sea Region.
Thank you.
Es gilt das gesprochene Wort.