About the city of Halle (Saale)
With about 245,000 inhabitants, Halle (Saale) is the second largest city of the German state of Saxony Anhalt and one of the main economic and educational centers of Central Germany. As the “City of Handel,” Halle (Saale) is also an important cultural hub and offers a wide variety of events and recreational activities for tourists and residents alike.
Sven Götze has been working in the City of Halle (Saale)’s IT department for over five years, handling license management and general IT contract management, and has actively supported and helped coordinate the implementation of Stackfields.
Sven Götze – Licence management and IT contract management
Catalyst Smart City
In 2022, the city of Halle (Saale) received funding as a model Smart City project municipality to develop and implement various Smart City projects, both independently and in collaboration with the municipal utilities. The goal was to improve the quality of life for the residents of City Halle (Saale) and to closely link citizenship, business, academia, and government in the process. The Smart City project laid an important foundation for collaboration in Stackfield. Sven Götze explains: “Smart City is, above all, about new development. We knew we needed a tool that would allow us, on the one hand, to organize various subject areas and, on the other hand, to collaborate seamlessly with others in a secure data room. Of course, I could also accomplish this with traditional IT resources, such as file servers that I then share with others, but that would involve more manual effort and lack a central point of contact. That was our starting point.” As a municipal administration, City Halle (Saale) places particular emphasis on identifying and implementing current trends and changes in the world of work. Sven Götze emphasizes: “What I see as an IT project today is something I used to view quite differently in the past. Today, the step toward an IT project is much smaller than it was just a few years ago, and IT plays a role everywhere.” It was therefore clear from the start that a digital tool like Stackfield would play a key role in implementing the smart city vision.
At that point, the city of Halle (Saale) had already been using Stackfield for some time through a subsidiary of the municipal group and had thus already established “casual contact with colleagues” via Stackfield. Sven Götze explains: “The municipal utilities were already quite far along at that point and had set up a large account with a corresponding number of users, so the easiest solution for us was to jump right in there and build on their user experience. That allowed us to get started with some guidance.”
Secure collaboration, all in one place
In recent years, Stackfield has impressed the municipal group not only on a technical level but also in terms of meeting numerous security requirements. Sven Götze explains: “The features are now similar across many products, but there are subtle differences in focus: For example, can I use a product solely for resource planning, or can I also coordinate tasks? In Stackfield, I can create templates, define workflows, and manage resource planning, as well as work with tasks, subtasks, and scheduling, and apply all of this to day-to-day operations.” The breadth of features allows work to be carried out in one specific place without having to switch between platforms multiple times a day.
Beyond the functional aspects, the municipality placed particular emphasis on who, specifically, it would be dealing with as a service provider. “We need to know whether there is any exposure to the U.S. legal jurisdiction. There are providers that have some form of connection to the U.S. or are at least located outside the European Economic Area. There are strict requirements regarding data protection and information security, and project work may also involve the processing of confidential data and personal information. We therefore very quickly came to the conclusion that we must achieve a very high standard of information security and data protection here,” said Sven Götze. Stackfield, a Munich-based company with multiple ISO certifications, full GDPR compliance, and BSI certification, was exceptionally well-positioned for this.
Flexibility, modularity, and simplicity
Since it was clear from the start that the smart city project would take place in Stackfield, the team initially gave themselves enough leeway to explore the platform in the context of the project and set up the necessary structures. “It grew over time. We had a rough idea of where we wanted to go, but the Smart City project is a very abstract concept. That’s why we first needed some kind of playground,” said Sven Götze. Having a tool that offered a certain degree of flexibility was therefore an explicit requirement.
“We needed a tool that allowed for flexibility, not a rigid structure that would collapse if I removed a single component.”
Stackfield offered the necessary modularity to add or remove components as needed. Work can take place in so-called rooms, which are independent workspaces organized by topic, and modules such as tasks, pages, or files can be configured as desired. Sven Götze praises how user-friendly the platform remains despite its numerous configuration and customization options. The learning curve was minimal, and training was required only to a limited extent.
Structuring large-scale projects in Stackfield at various levels
Today, large-scale projects such as the Smart City project are transparently mapped and coordinated in Stackfield thanks to successfully established structures. The various subject areas, including mobility and “Smart Halle-Neustadt,” have been organized into room groups. New rooms are grouped by topic using these room groups, ensuring that the context of a room remains clear at all times. The actual work on organizational and administrative topics takes place within the individual rooms using Stackfield’s module elements and chat features, such as completing and managing tasks and appointments, discussing deviations and developments, and sharing various materials. “What’s great about this is that I can comment directly and chat with others,” says Sven Götze. Subject-matter administrators from the respective departments are responsible for the individual rooms. “Tasks are distributed decentralized, and adjustments can be made directly by those who work on the projects every day and therefore know the technical requirements best.” For small projects, the project room room type is also used. This provides additional insights into project progress as well as budget and timeline via the project details. “We have a very wide range of rooms,” emphasizes Sven Götze.
Standardizing processes and reducing errors with room templates
For recurring structures, room templates were additionally created in Stackfield. Rooms can thus be created based on these templates and populated and configured with predefined content. “This makes it easier for others to get started, so they can get going with virtually no additional help. That saves time and also makes it possible to standardize processes. For example, if I want to specify that an admin from the organization is assigned to every room in case support is needed, I don’t have to set that up manually every time. This eliminates a lot of clicks and reduces the potential for errors. At the same time, we need fewer coordination meetings that don’t add any real value in terms of content. I make changes once and they’re automatically applied to every new room,” says Sven Götze. The task templates are also being extensively tested as part of a migration project and are intended to make creating tasks easier in the future.
Managing different user groups with custom settings
In large-scale projects such as City Halle (Saale)’s Smart City project, people from various institutions regularly come together: colleagues from the city administration, the municipal utilities, their subsidiaries, as well as external parties such as project partners, partner municipalities, and service providers are involved and must establish channels for collaboration. In Stackfield, cross-organizational collaboration can now be achieved with minimal effort. Employees of the city’s municipal group can easily join City Halle (Saale)’s Stackfield organization using their Stackfield account and be added to relevant rooms. External participants, on the other hand, are integrated with varying levels of access depending on their role in the project. Sven Götze explains: “There are people who are fully involved in the work, much like internal employees. These individuals are standard licensed users, have nearly the same rights, and may even moderate a room. However, there are also external parties who provide support such as expert opinions but are not directly involved in the project’s progress. These individuals are managed as Externals and provide support only to the extent required by their tasks.” The user role External restricts access strictly according to the need-to-know principle, as content must be explicitly shared.
The ability to manage different users in different ways is expected to become particularly relevant in the future, especially in City Halle’s construction projects. “When it’s not just about IT but actually involves something tangible, the great thing is that you’re dealing with a wide range of people – fire safety experts, architects, and professionals from all kinds of fields,” explains Sven Götze. Stackfield, who is also expected to serve as a central point of contact here in the future.
The Joy of communication in Stackfield
Although internal communication now takes place through various channels, it has become much more centralized and, thanks to Stackfield, is even more structured. “Email traffic has decreased significantly. Anything that can be communicated in Stackfield is handled there. The chat feature, in particular, is very popular,” emphasizes Sven Götze. The communication stream in the room serves as the central hub. All activities and chat messages in the room are listed there chronologically. This makes it easy to see any changes at any time, even after extended absences.
“The communication stream is used very actively and also simplifies the time aspect. Normally, I’d have to put all that information into an email, draft it first, then send it; the other person would have to read the email at some point, think about how to reply, and so on. In Stackfield, this can be done in real time, and above all, it lowers the barrier to communication.”
Looking ahead, Sven Götze is very optimistic and eager to continue growing over time and to implement new use cases in Stackfield.