SmartVillages participation process in the municipality of Pontresina

Applicable in rural, non-city areas

Municipality

Active Working People

1.1.2022-30.11.2022

Implementation

Key Conditions for Success

- Focus on existing pain points and not ‘global concepts’ - Identify the right know-how carriers, they do not need specific ‘digitalisation know-how’. expertise. - Local contact is very important when selecting the right people / participants - Support for local participants' projects is important for continuation - Identification of the right topics is crucial - Demonstrate potential to participants with existing examples. This is very important for the ‘solution design’

Key Steps for Activity Implementation

The first step was to identify relevant topics and the right expertise providers from the region. In this context, we decided to conduct one-hour interviews with the members of various municipal commissions in order to identify possible starting points for digitalisation. In the end, we defined 4 thematic blocks: - Mobility - tourism - School & People - e-Government The initial situation of the individual topics was prepared. Together with the project partner e-Estonia, existing ‘solution approaches’ were identified and presented to the workshop participants (only as ‘inspiration’ and not as the solution to the local problem). Local workshop participants were invited according to the topics. After the workshops were held, the results were not verified again with the participants - the objectives and measures of the individual topics were adopted for the decisions in the municipal council.

Difficulties Encountered

- Coordination of many participants means that the realisation of the workshops takes a very long time, which has an impact on the project timeline (takes longer than expected) - In some cases, it was difficult to find the right people so that not all topics were discussed or the local input was not very broadly supported - The municipality itself has already initiated a number of projects that would certainly have interfaces with digitalisation - these topics will only be addressed as soon as the topic (e.g. Energy City project) is tackled - Municipality has interfaces with the federal government and canton - e.g. 3 pedestrian crossings are the responsibility of the municipality and one of the canton; a solution for the entire topic actually makes sense; due to the demarcation, the topic tends not to be addressed. - Digitalisation solutions for smaller and/or special municipalities / groups are rather rare; this means that individual solutions would better meet the needs and make more sense, but are more expensive. In addition, there is a local lack of expertise for the creation of customised solutions - standard solutions are still preferred.

Resources Needed

around 29'000 Euros