Faruk Tuncer discusses with federal CIO at Initiative D21 GovTech panel

On October 25, 2021, the D21 network met at the GovTechCampus Germany in Berlin for the GovTalk Special. The Federal Ministry for Digitization and Business Location Austria and Initiative D21 had invited to an exclusive presentation of the D-A-CH country comparison in the current eGovernment MONITOR with a focus on the figures from Austria.

Moderated by Nils Hoffmann, the panel included Federal CIO Dr. Markus Richter and Austrian Federal Minister Dr. Margarete Schramboeck in discussion with D21 Managing Director Lena-Sophie Müller and two representatives from startups in the GovTech scene: Dinah Schmechel and Faruk Tuncer. How Austria and the GovTech scene are already driving innovation in the field of digital government was a central topic.

Polyteia supports Schleswig-Holstein in Corona crisis management

Whether incidence values, case numbers or R-values – a proper data basis is elementary for the management of the Corona pandemic. In most cases, however, data are scattered in silos, making it much more difficult to assess the crisis situation on the ground on a daily basis. This also applies to the education sector. In Schleswig-Holstein, schools reported their caseloads by e-mail in a PDF form. Manually collating this data took a lot of time and made it difficult to respond quickly. 

The Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in Kiel is therefore the first Ministry of Education in Germany to take a completely digital approach: with the help of Polyteia’s data platform, impairments to school operations and infection events such as confirmed Corona cases, quarantine or distance learning have been digitally recorded, aggregated and visualized on a daily basis since December 2020. 

The more than 700 schools in Schleswig-Holstein conveniently enter their data on current infection incidence in a web application. The data collected in this way is then linked with the state’s school statistics to create a digital situation report. In a compact dashboard, the Minister of Education and her crisis team then obtain a quick overview of the situation with key figures, diagrams and tables. The Ministry of Education is also making the dashboard available to the public with immediate effect in order to provide media representatives and citizens with transparent information about the situation.

“An up-to-date and reliable database is essential for our crisis management during the pandemic,” emphasizes Minister Karin Prien. This is not just a matter of collecting pure infection data, such as that received by the health authorities. Rather, school supervisors must be able to react if the maintenance of school operations is endangered by local outbreak events. “With Polyteia’s data platform, we now have the necessary digital tool for data-based management of measures at our fingertips, which relieves the burden on both the schools and our employees in the ministry.” The development process was very agile and the application was ready for use and rolled out to all schools within a few weeks.

“As part of this innovation partnership with the state of Schleswig-Holstein, we have created a reference solution for Corona crisis management in the education system that can be scaled to all German states,” adds Polyteia CEO Faruk Tuncer.

The dashboard can be accessed via the following direct link from any web browser: https://schuldashboard.sh.polyteia.de

Polyteia founder discusses practical examples of successful data use at KGSt’s Digital Community Congress

Together with Marc Groß, Program Area Manager Organizational and Information Management at KGSt, Polyteia founder Faruk Tuncer moderated the workshop Data, Data, Data at the completely virtual congress “Digitale Kommune Unplugged” from the RheinEnergieStadion in Cologne on November 26.

Workshop participants included speakers from the cities of Goslar, Ulm and the district of Pinneberg, who presented exciting examples of municipal data use that are already in use. Oliver Kasties, Head of Central Services at the City of Goslar, gave a live tour of the Polyteia personnel module, among other things, which Goslar has used to put personnel management and reporting for the city council on a new footing.

KGSt and Polyteia develop joint data model for personnel management in crisis situations

KGSt and Polyteia use a practical example to show what a data model for the staff planning of priority services of a municipality can look like in the event of a pandemic. The evaluation of data from specialized procedures in connection with the prioritization of processes or services makes it possible to maintain the functionality of the administration and to act effectively.

To derive the greatest possible benefit from administrative data generated in processes, data fields must be standardized. This also makes key figures comparable across municipalities. A framework for administrative data could set a standard here, despite the heterogeneity of specialized procedures, users and approaches.

You can find the KGSt thought provoking here.

Coverage of the KGSt thought-provoking event:
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Polyteia Founders on Panel with Serbian Prime Minister at GovTech Summit

KGSt and Polyteia use a practical example to show what a data model for the staff planning of priority services of a municipality can look like in the event of a pandemic. The evaluation of data from specialized procedures in connection with the prioritization of processes or services makes it possible to maintain the functionality of the administration and to act effectively.

On November 14, the GovTech Summit took place in Paris. The event, which took place this year at the Palais Brongniart, the headquarters of the Paris Stock Exchange, brings together representatives of the administrations of European countries with the GovTech scene. The Summit was created and organized by the GovTech venture firm PUBLIC with the aim of bundling and networking Europe’s potential and players in this field. Polyteia’s founder and CEO Faruk Tuncer sat on a panel together with Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić, Greek Digital Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis and Leipzig’s Administrative Mayor Ulrich Hörning, who addressed the question of what conditions could help the European GovTech movement achieve sustainable success. Among other things, the discussion focused on the question of whether current procurement regulations were slowing down innovation and how the state, as a contracting authority, should help startups to develop new digital solutions for the administration.

Both on the panel and in other formats of the GovTech Summit, it was emphasized that Europe’s strength could lie in offering an innovative GovTech scene in the numerous European countries a wide range of use cases and potential customers. In the foyer of the exchange, providers from various countries also had the opportunity to present their solutions and products.

Polyteia wins Smart Country Startup Award 2019

At the second edition of the Smart Country Convention in Berlin, Polyteia came out on top as the winner of the Startup Award in the “E-Government” category. “Polyteia and LiveEO presented ideas that are not only technologically convincing, but also bring real benefits to citizens and the public sector,” said Jenny Boldt, Head of Startups at Bitkom. In a short 3-minute pitch, the startups had to convince the jury of the degree of innovation and the actual applicability of their solution. The evaluation of data from specialized procedures in conjunction with the prioritization of processes and services makes it possible to maintain the functionality of the administration and to act effectively.

“Congratulations to this year’s winners Polyteia and LiveEO! It was not an easy task for our jury, there were a number of excellent project proposals. I wish all the young companies who participated in the competition with their creative and, above all, innovative ideas, every success.”

— Ramona Pop
Berlin Senator fot Econimic Affairs and member of the jury

In addition, Polyteia also presented itself with a booth and at the Startup Pitch of KPMG at the Smart Country Convention. During the three days, many conversations could be held with municipalities, other digital startups and representatives of other administrative levels.

Polyteia wins myGovernment Hero Award and wildcard for Smart Country Award

At the myGovernment 2019 event hosted by the Institute for the Public Sector, supported by KPMG, Polyteia was selected by a jury as one of 5 startups to pitch its solution to the audience. The audience then voted via online voting on who should become myGovernment Hero 2019.

Together with Breeze Technologies, Polyteia won the most votes. In the second vote, which was about choosing a startup to win a booth and a wildcard for the Smart Country Convention in October in Berlin, Polyteia clearly came out on top. Together with approx.

10 other startups, Polyteia then presented its solution at the Marketplace of Ideas, where event participants were able to gather information after the competition and panel.Capability of the administration and to act effectively.

“Be smart, be cool, Behörde!” Startup booth at 20th meeting of the Lower Saxony Association of Cities in Lüneburg, September 25-26, 2019

Under the motto “Be smart, be cool, Behörde!”, Polyteia will present its control platform on September 25 and 26 at the 20th City Assembly of the Lower Saxony Association of Cities in Lüneburg. Together with the startups Commnex, Sdui and Vialytics, Polyteia will show how innovative startup solutions can accelerate the digitalization of public administration.

More details on the participating startups: http://neu-im-amt.de/

Town Meeting Info: https://www.nst.de/Aktuelles/St%C3%A4dteversammlung-2019

Federal Minister of Finance Olaf Scholz visits Polyteia

Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister of Finance Olaf Scholz today visited the GovTech startup Polyteia in Berlin-Kreuzberg. In conversation, the Finance Minister exchanged views with the Polyteia team on the growing importance of startups developing digital solutions for public administration. The sector known as “GovTech” (Government Technology) is considered a growth market in Europe and promises great potential for the digital transformation of politics and administration.

Faruk Tuncer, CEO of Polyteia, gave the federal minister a demonstration of the intelligent control platform that brings together data and prepares it for decision-makers in cities and municipalities. Faruk Tuncer and his team of experts in IT, data integration and analysis founded Polyteia because they saw a lot of potential for more effective municipal public services in better use of administrative data. The smart Polyteia solution breaks data out of the silos of various software systems, Excel spreadsheets and files and makes it usable for mayors, treasurers or council members in municipalities. The decision-makers can thus control based on data, communicate more effectively within the administration or in the council and have figures at hand to be able to argue competently on various topics at any time.

The Polyteia management team told Finance Minister Scholz from their own experience as a startup how digitization is progressing in Germany. For example, he said, there are more than 10,000 municipalities that are facing major challenges in digitizing their administrative services for citizens, partly in view of the Online Access Act. Equally, he said, this also means putting evolved internal processes to the test. “In many municipalities, the data has so far been used hardly at all or with little effectiveness. In addition, compiling and preparing data in Excel spreadsheets consumes a lot of time and resources,” says Faruk Tuncer. Nevertheless, there are many employees in city halls who stick to such processes.

“There are many bold and innovative administrations in Germany that are open to greater digital use of data.”

— Faruk Tuncer
CEO Polyteia

In order to develop effective digital solutions for citizens and administrative staff, startups like Polyteia need access to data and processes that are often located in specialized procedures at public data centers. With some partners, productive partnerships have already developed here, from which both sides benefit. In other cases, the data integration processes are more protracted. To promote innovation, it is particularly important here to provide better access to the data of cities and municipalities via standardized interfaces. Data protection plays an important role. Here, a way must be found that ensures the necessary protection of personal data and at the same time enables the development of innovative solutions.

In general, however, the mood among GovTech startups is one of optimism, says Tuncer. The industry in Germany is well networked and supports each other. However, the digital transformation of the administration can only succeed through sensible cooperation models between the state, the established IT industry and startups. The visit of the Federal Minister of Finance to Polyteia sends a strong signal for the government’s cooperation with the German startup scene, he said.

Polyteia participates in GovTech program Denmark

The GovTech Program Denmark is a joint initiative of the Danish Ministry of Industry, Economics and Finance and the European GovTech Venture Firm PUBLIC. The goal of the program is to bring together the Danish ministry administration with the solutions proposed by young IT startups. To this end, five different units of the ministry have formulated current challenges they face in their work processes in so-called “challenges”. These units and departments were then brought together with startups that could develop possible solutions to these challenges. In an iterative process, administrative and company representatives were able to get to know each other, flesh out the problems and outline digital solutions.to obtain and act effectively.

Polyteia participated in Challenge 5 of the Danish Consumer and Competition Agency, which was looking for a data-based solution to optimize the time-consuming process of price regulation of water and wastewater utilities.

At the end of the market dialog, the ministerial departments can decide whether to actually issue a call for tenders. With the decisive advantage that they have a better overview of the market and available products. Through the program, companies have the opportunity to validate and raise awareness of their solutions with new potential customer segments.

Polyteia at 40th General Meeting of the German Association of Cities in Dortmund

Under the motto “We love digital administration”, Polyteia presented its digital solutions for innovative administrations together with the startups Commnex, LQEnterprise and Stadt.Land.Netz. The startups hosted a joint booth as part of the 40th General Assembly of the German Association of Cities from June 4 to 6 in Dortmund. Mayors were able to learn about digital products in various areas such as school transportation, municipal lending, integration management of refugees or data-based control.

The young companies’ offerings met with great interest among the approximately 1,300 delegates of the Association of German Cities and Towns, and the stand was lively throughout the three days of the meeting. Among the visitors were Ullrich Sierau, Lord Mayor of the City of Dortmund, and Markus Lewe, Lord Mayor of the City of Münster and President of the German Association of Cities, who paid a visit to the stand as part of a tour.

Polyteia founder on panel with chief data officer of city of Los Angeles

The Austrian startup platform Pioneers brings the European and global GovTech scene together annually in Vienna. This year’s GovTech.Pioneers conference focused on digital technologies used in the public sector to help the state fulfill its tasks. At the conference, participants discussed current trends and developments in this area in a variety of formats.

Faruk Tuncer, founder and CEO of Polyteia, was invited to speak on a panel with Sari Ladin-Sienne, Chief Data Officer of the City of Los Angeles, on the topic of data use in cities. Sari Ladin-Sienne first introduced the data strategy of Los Angeles, before Faruk Tuncer reported on the state of affairs and experiences in Germany. Both panelists agreed that the technological challenges could be overcome. The real challenge lies in the change in mentality within the administration that modern technologies bring with them. Administrative employees must be actively involved in the digitization processes. At the same time, silo thinking must be eliminated. 

Polyteia presents new functions at the “Artificial Intelligence – Speed Dating” in the Bundestag

On May 15, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, together with Bitkom, the German AI Association and the German Startups Association, invited members of the Bundestag to a “speed dating” event on the topic of artificial intelligence. Seven companies and research institutions working with and on artificial intelligence were invited as discussion partners. After introductory words from the hosts, the participants were each able to spend 15 minutes at a booth in small groups to learn about the various possible applications of artificial intelligence. 

Polyteia presented the intelligent control platform for cities and municipalities to the delegates. Faruk Tuncer, CEO of Polyteia, explained in which areas the company is already using artificial intelligence. For example, municipal data located in raw analog documents is already being brought into the platform through image recognition processes. 

At the same time, Polyteia is also testing various possible applications for Natural Language Processing. For example, text modules that regularly occur in reports and describe graphs and visualizations in a value-free manner can be created automatically. This saves the responsible clerks a lot of time and allows them to concentrate on the qualitative evaluation and classification of the visualized data.

Among the audience were CDU/CSU parliamentary party leader Ralph Brinkhaus, former Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maiziére, and deputy parliamentary party leader Nadine Schön. Like many members of parliament, all three asked questions about how Polyteia works for municipalities and about a possible application at the state and federal level.

Digital State” conference in Berlin with Polyteia in trade exhibition

On April 02 and 03, Polyteia participated with a booth at the conference “Digitaler Staat” of Behördenspiegel at the event center KOSMOS Berlin. The event brings together decision makers and experts from politics, administration, science and economy and covers all topics around the challenges of digitalization of all administrative levels. In addition to federal authorities and agencies as well as companies, foundations and associations, digitization-savvy municipalities also visited the fair to learn about the latest developments and solutions.

As part of the trade exhibition, Polyteia presented the current status of its control platform and sought discussions with interested conference visitors. The product module child day care as well as the prototypes of the modules demography, school and personnel met with great interest.

More than 20 mayors discuss use of Polyteia platform at Baden-Württemberg Municipal Day in Stuttgart

On February 12, 2019, Polyteia and the Gemeindetag Baden-Württemberg organized a workshop entitled “Making data usable for decision-making”. With registrations from around 20 cities and municipalities, the maximum number of participants was quickly reached shortly after the invitations were sent out.

As part of the “Cities and Communities 4.0 – Future communities” funding program of the Ministry of the Interior, Digitization and Migration, Gemeindetag Baden-Württemberg is hosting workshops to bring innovative municipalities and young IT companies to the table.

The goal of the workshop was to find out together in which areas and in which form data could be helpful in municipal decision-making processes.

We must also dare to do something in digitization and not be afraid to make mistakes. It’s just important that we don’t all make the same ones.

— Roger Kehle
President and Chief Executive Officer Gemeindetag Baden-Württemberg

Roger Kehle, President of Gemeindetag Baden-Württemberg, opened the workshop with a plea for more courage in digitalization and an openness on the part of municipalities to cooperate with young IT startups such as Polyteia, which often offer flexible and custom-fit solutions for cities and municipalities. Raimon Ahrens, mayor of Rudersberg, the first pilot municipality of Polyteia in Baden-Württemberg, gave a short presentation on why he had decided to use data with Polyteia in Rudersberg.

Decisions that administration and municipal council have to make are becoming more and more complex. Polyteia helps to make well-founded decisions and to transparently involve the citizens.

— Raimon Ahrens
Mayor of the municipality of Rudersberg

Afterwards, the municipal representatives exchanged ideas and shared their experiences at group tables on various topics such as business, infrastructure and urban development, education and social affairs, and budget. Together, the participants identified which key figures are important for their areas of activity and where corresponding data sets could be available.

Faruk Tuncer, Managing Director of Polyteia, then presented the possibilities already offered by the Polyteia intelligent control platform with its daycare, demographic and school modules. Ilona Benz from Gemeindetag Baden-Württemberg then explained the funding opportunities offered by the Future Communities program for municipalities that decide to work with Polyteia.

Afterwards, during a lunch snack, there was the opportunity for a direct personal exchange between the municipal representatives and Polyteia, where concrete points of contact and next appointments on site could be discussed and agreed upon.

As a prelude to the workshop, Gemeindetag published the article ‘Smart Control is the Future of Administration’ by Polyteia’s Managing Director Faruk Tuncer in the Second Edition of the association’s magazine ‘Die Gemeinde’.

Polyteia voted into the finals of TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2018’s prestigious “Startup Battlefield”.

At Disrupt Berlin, Polyteia made it to the finals of the “Start-up Battlefield” from over 1000 applicants. Disrupt Berlin is an annual technology conference where investors meet young companies and other interested parties from the industry.

In the run-up to the annual Disrupt Berlin conference of the technology magazine TechCrunch, 13 finalists were selected from more than 1,000 applicants to present their solutions on the big stage of the conference. In addition, the finalists had their own booths where investors, customers or potential partners could find out more about the companies.

Polyteia was able to prove itself on the first day in front of a group of judges, all of whom had founded successful companies in various fields. On the second day Polyteia was one of the last 5 finalists on stage.

Read more about Polyteia’s appearance at Disrupt Berlin here.

Polyteia presents platform at Smart Country Convention in Berlin.

From 20 – 22 November 2018, the first Smart Country Convention of the industry association BITKOM took place in Berlin at the Messe Berlin. For three days, digital solutions for the administration of the future were presented and discussed. Polyteia was represented there with a booth and met with partners and potential customers.

In addition to various representatives of the federal government, ministries, states, many start-ups and representatives of cities and municipalities were also represented.

As a partner country, Denmark was represented at a high level and explained in various formats the extent to which the digitization of administration is already advanced in Denmark and how cooperation between the public sector and young IT companies is being promoted.

Click here o read the interview with Faruk Tuncer, CEO of Polyteia, about the 2018 Smart Country Convention.