Berlin starts digital guide for smart urban development!

Berlin starts digital guide for smart urban development!

Berlin, Deutschland - On June 18, 2025, the city of Berlin took a decisive step to promote the connection between urban development and digitization. As part of the "Together Digital: Berlin" initiative, the digital data governance pathweis was published, which functions the Data & Smart City Governance measure. This was announced berlin.de.

A research project by the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and the Water Berlin (KWB) competence center worked on this sign in close coordination with the Senate Chancellery. The aim of the guide is to promote efficient cooperation between public administrations, the economy and civil society in the use and processing of data.

important goals of the data governance

The Data Governance Initiative aims to bring reluctant interests in the collection and reuse of data to a denominator. The data subjects concerned range from personal information on business secrets to open data. A central concern of governance is to promote sharing data in order to generate new knowledge, enable innovations and network people. The clarification of legal uncertainties and compliance with ethical standards are in the foreground. Conflicts of interest that can occur between public services and the protection of business secrets should be prevented in order to avoid surveillance, censorship, exploitation and discrimination as well as political repression, as jointdigital.berlin.de reports.

The interactive data governance guide is provided as a digital manual for administrations, companies, politics and the population. This gives all involved access to background information, methods and practical templates for data governance. State Secretary Martina Klement emphasizes the importance of the signpost for the later cooperation of the authorities, while Professor Dr. Max von Grafenstein emphasized the provision of specific tools for digital innovations.

The guide and its relevance

The Data Governance Way is now available free of charge on [Hiig.de/data-governance-wegweiser. The guide is intended to help to deal with challenges in dealing with data collection and processing. The initiative is part of a more comprehensive research project that also includes an analysis of the data strategies of model projects in the area of ​​smart cities. Under the patronage of the German Institute for Urban Studies (Difu), existing data strategies in European and international space are examined in order to develop recommendations for municipal data strategies, as described in [smart-city-dialog.de] (https://www.smart-city-dialog.de/data strategies).

This approach creates the basis to promote both strategic and institutional and instrumental implementations of data strategies. In addition to the data of the core administration, the range also includes broader data strategies, which ultimately leads to a comprehensive municipal data strategy that also includes municipal participations.

With this initiative, Berlin is positioned as a pioneer in digital transformation and as a prime example of modern urban development that has grown to the challenges of the future.