Integreat

In 2015, with a big refugee movement from Syria and Iraq among other countries, in a collaborative effort with local integration experts, local institutions and the municipal administration of the city of Augsburg, we developed a digital integration platform: Integreat.

The platform consists of an offline usable app, website, and PDF brochure to support refugees and migrants on their integration journey on a municipal level. The content is created directly within Integreat’s editorial system by municipal and NGO employees collectively in those partner municipalities – currently done in every fourth of Germany’s 401 municipalities.

All municipalities share the same platform and app and even content if they see fit. These synergies lead to a highly cost-efficient platform. Integreat is fully open source and the content is CC 4.0 BY licensed. We have brought in technology which can be used immediately by beneficiaries and service providers. Smartphones are the most common digital device owned by everyone, including migrants and refugees who can access the information on Integreat.

Our platform’s technology has also been white-labelled to be re-used in large refugee reception facilities in Germany operated by the NGO Malteser and has been implemented in 40 of their accommodations.

Integreat is unique in the approach that our platform empowers municipal administrations and local stakeholders to create a multilingual information platform by themselves. Integreat empowers collaborative action between all local stakeholders and continuously introduces new technological developments in the field of digital local integration efforts. Artificial intelligence translations are made available to reduce translation costs and speed up the distribution of crucial real-time information.

Compared to most other information platforms for newcomers in Europe, Integreat is fully open source and the content is creative commons-licensed to maximise our impact. The content is shared across municipal borders and other organisations can use the Integreat technology to set up their own integration platform.

Other multilingual information platforms are often managed by one single organisation gathering information and creating content from afar or only provide too general information for the whole country and are missing highly relevant local content. It is almost impossible to reach a complete base of relevant information if local stakeholders are not included in this process. Additionally, Integreat was able to implement a successful business model that makes us relatively highly independent from funding.

One of the most powerful tools to succeed in today’s world is information – specifically trustworthy and understandable information. With each local Integreat implementation thousands of refugees and migrants find an understandable and complete overview of their rights, local processes, support services and contacts for the very first time. Integreat is very respectful towards our users’ privacy as they belong to one of the most vulnerable groups of people.

We only track very aggregated data but we know that Integreat answers 250,000 questions each month as this number represents the amount of API requests in the most recent months.

Digitisation is the gold rush of the 21st century, but with the mechanisms of our current markets, the most marginalised will not profit from these developments. We need specific projects which are making use of the tools developed during this gold rush to elevate those who are traditionally left behind.

 Integreat has chosen to do this. A large development community was established using open source software and frameworks, developed and used by some of the largest digital companies to build digital bridges between refugees and migrants and host societies to overcome information gaps.