Wiesbaden (dpa/lhe) - Hessian citizens can now take part in decision-making processes via a participation portal on the Internet. The website makes it possible to view statements on planning projects and laws, to register for events and to take part in citizen surveys or polls. At the start, Digital State Secretary Patrick Burghardt (CDU) presented the portal at a video conference on Monday in Wiesbaden.
One of the first digital participations is an approval process in Großenlüder (Fulda district). A cement and lime plant there has applied to the regional council in Kassel to convert one of their plants to produce cement. Citizens - but also organizations such as environmental organizations - can submit their statements digitally until December 9th. The regional council then evaluates the submissions. This enables the authorities to process the statements and thus the approval procedures more easily and quickly, explained a spokeswoman for the Digital Ministry.
The participation portal from Saxony serves as a technical model. The state administration and various municipalities in the Free State have been using the software since 2015. With success: in 2021 alone, the Free State carried out more than 3000 participation formats via the portal, said Saxony's State Secretary for Digital Administration and Administrative Modernization, Thomas Popp.
"Many citizens want to get actively involved in the community and get involved in decision-making processes," said Popp. The state and administration are therefore well advised to keep the hurdles for this as low as possible. Hesse is now the second federal state after North Rhine-Westphalia to have signed a cooperation agreement with Saxony. This allows countries to share and further develop the software.
The portal gives access to all the necessary documents for a participation process, said the spokeswoman for the Digital Ministry. "This saves citizens having to go to the administrative authority." As a pilot project, the Gießen regional council published the Central Hesse regional plan on the portal in the spring.
