Germany’s local governments face considerable pressures: Budget restrictions, increasing citizens’ expectations concerning service quality, sociodemographic distractions, and environmental issues – to name just a few. From the beginning of the Internet era, governments have tried to exploit modern ICT. For some time now, the focus has been on a new eGovernment dimension: Open Government. The basic idea is to get citizens more involved in local issues. In line with the Social media paradigm, Open Government targets openness, closeness to people and participation. From a technological perspective, it is evident that this political agenda requires robust ICT, enabling fast, flexible and affordable solutions, tailored to specific local needs. This paper outlines the path from eGovernment to Open Government and presents an affordable Open Government platform, the OpenGovernment Suite, which fits into the general IT roadmap of the German Government.
eGovernment, Open Government, SAGA, OpenSAGA