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Solingen is putting an end to paper: the digital official gazette is taking over!
The city of Solingen is informing about the switch to digital announcements to replace postal deliveries.
Solingen is putting an end to paper: the digital official gazette is taking over!
A remarkable change has taken place in the city of Solingen: the city administration has decided to replace traditional postal delivery with a modern form of announcement. This innovation comes into effect when the recipients' addresses are unknown and ensures that important information is disseminated quickly and efficiently. Instead of the usual paper notice at the town hall, the announcement is now made exclusively via the digital official gazette. This not only increases efficiency, but also takes a more environmentally friendly approach in order to avoid legal deadlines and thus the loss of rights. According to solinger-nachrichten.de, this measure applies immediately.
What does this actually mean for citizens? It is important that every municipality is now obliged to provide the URL of the website on which the official announcements can be found. These digital notices are considered equivalent to the traditional form as long as there are no legal regulations to the contrary. This results, among other things, from the Bavarian Digital Act (BayDiG), which has been in force since August 1, 2022 and creates the legal framework for digital publications. According to bayrvr.boorberg.de, the municipal regulations have also been changed to the effect that digital announcements of statutes are now permitted.
Digital announcements in detail
What are the practical benefits of this digital transition? In the future, municipalities will only be able to publish statutes, regulations and other official content digitally. There are various options for this:
- Digital veröffentlichtes Amtsblatt der Gemeinde oder Verwaltungsgemeinschaft
- Digital veröffentlichtes Amtsblatt des Landkreises für kreisangehörige Gemeinden ohne eigenes Amtsblatt
- Digitale Tageszeitung
- Niederlegung in der Verwaltung mit Bekanntgabe auf der Internetseite oder digitalem Bildschirm
These measures are not only efficient, but also contemporary. Nevertheless, the analogue announcement remains legally relevant as long as it is offered in parallel. This means that citizens still have the opportunity to access the information in a tried and tested form. The first day the file is publicly available on the Internet is considered the day of official announcement.
Technical challenges and solutions
However, the implementation of these digital measures also brings with it technical challenges. An institution like EconStor is concerned with ensuring stable access to digital content. To prevent aggressive scraping attempts by AI companies, a system called Anubis has been implemented, which can cause downtime at certain moments. This technique uses a proof-of-work scheme, similar to Hashcash, to regulate access to the content. The goal is to increase the cost of scraping while providing users with a stable platform. Users are even asked to deactivate certain plugins to ensure smooth access, as described in econstor.eu.
Overall, the development in Solingen shows that digitalization in administration is not just a buzzword, but a targeted measure to increase efficiency and conserve resources. It remains exciting to see how these measures will prove themselves in daily practice.