With the online portal “Wegweiser Kommune” – “local guidepost” – and its interactive information visualization, the Bertelsmann Foundation creates a central knowledge platform on the internet for political decision-makers and strategic planners on local level.

Based on the demographic change that influences all political areas, the Foundation set the goal to actively support local and regional authorities in Germany on the strategic planning of future-oriented politics with a web-based platform. The “local guidepost” was developed by ]init[ in cooperation with the Bertelsmann Foundation. It bundles data, studies, and concepts for the local research fields: demographic changes, economy and employment, living, social situation, finances and integration and issues a population forecast until 2020 for about 3,000 local authorities that are in charge of about 85% of Germany’s population.