Service Center Oberrhein

ongoing

The four INFOBESTs on the Upper Rhine inform and advise the public on cross-border issues. These places, which are distributed in the region from the north to the south, have been around for more than 25 years. However, their structures and resources have remained unchanged since then, although the requests – especially since the health crisis – are becoming more and more complex. Therefore, it is now urgently necessary to expand the equipment of this network, especially in the field of digitalisation. As the various administrations have digitised their processes, it is becoming increasingly difficult to reach them and find contact persons specifically for the complex questions. At the same time, the INFOBEST teams are so overburdened that they can only fulfill their diverse tasks to a limited extent. The project “INFOBEST 4.0 | Service Center Upper Rhine” aims to give the INFOBEST network new momentum and to make its work more efficient and to make it more visible. The teams want to make their services more accessible to the public by digitising the offer in order to have more time for advice. The new recruitment of consultants and their training for digitalised administrative processes will strengthen cross-border public services at local level: The aim is to help citizens submit their applications by going through INFOBEST as a one stop agency. This is a new service offer for the current INFOBEST network. The latter also wants to adapt to the digital age by revising the INFOBEST network’s joint website and building a shared knowledge base, and by developing new online tools that automatically answer questions most frequently asked by citizens. In addition, the project also includes an extensive sub-area on the sustainability of the new development of the INFOBEST network: A study on the functioning and sustainability of the network will be carried out, proposing starting points for long-term considerations. The measures taken during the three years of project implementation will help to develop the information and advice activities of INFOBESTs in terms of quality and quantity in order to better respond to the needs of people living in the cross-border Upper Rhine region.

Medium