Project management for cities and local authorities
A city administration runs many projects at once: digitalisation, building schools and nurseries, urban development funding, smart city, neighbourhood development. They cut across departments, depend on deadlines set by funding bodies and committees, and often a few people carry a great deal. KlangCity is project management software that makes exactly this visible. Tasks, Kanban, chat, video calls and minutes are in one tool. On top of that, a 3D city shows where things are stuck. And yes: in KlangCity, your administration itself becomes a city.
What makes project management in local government hard
Projects in public administration have their own rules. The KGSt, the German association for municipal management, devotes its own reports to the subject, for example on steering with project portfolios and the role of managers (German). The City of Cologne introduced common minimum standards and shared software (German) for its whole administration. Day to day, project teams keep running into the same hurdles:
- Many projects, little overview. Which projects are going well, which are falling behind? Often only the person who reads every department’s status reports knows.
- Responsibilities across departments. The building authority, finance, IT and the specialist department work on the same project, each with its own process.
- A few carry a lot. Skilled staff are scarce. Whoever knows their stuff ends up in every project, until it gets too much.
- Knowledge gets lost. Whoever moves on or retires takes agreements and background with them.
How to set up projects in an administration step by step, from the roles to the final report, is in the guide Project management in city administrations (German).
Your administration as a city
KlangCity translates your work into a picture that everyone can read at once:
- Every task is a building. The construction stage follows the work phase, and the height shows how many groups are involved.
- Every department or team is a district with its own colour.
- Every project runs through the city as a tram, and milestones are its stops.
KlangCity calculates 35 signals from your tasks, without any AI and traceably, with numbers. A few examples:
- “Project in trouble”: The project tram is on fire because more than half of the open tasks are overdue.
- “Expertise group overloaded”: Pickets in the district, because the workload per person is above the threshold.
- “Task on ice”: Icicles on the building. This task hasn’t moved for more than 30 days.
- “Free capacity”: A party outside the house. There is still room for a new task here.
Every Monday the weekly report sums up what was done and what was left lying. That way the project lead knows where things stand without collecting status reports. More on the page The 3D city.
Steering projects across departments
Every task runs through five fixed phases: Brainstorming, Draft, Implementation, Presentation, Done. Everyone speaks the same language, whichever department they come from. Plus milestones, checklists with @mentions and recurring tasks, for example for the paper for the next committee meeting. More under Kanban board.
Bringing in external firms. Planning firms, consultants or service providers join as guests. Guests read the overview, the city, projects, tasks and the calendar and don’t count as people in your plan. They don’t see Drive, chat, email or signals about people. From Pro, you can also bring external people without an account into the video call for appointments.
Meetings that write their own minutes. Video calls run on our own server in Frankfurt am Main. Before the meeting you vote on the agenda. Only people who agree before the call are transcribed. The minutes are written from that, and the raw transcript is deleted afterwards. More under Meeting minutes.
Knowledge that stays. Processes and how-tos are in the company handbook, files in file storage (Drive), agreements in chat with channels for each group. For meetings there are live presentations.
Example organisation, no sign-up. Works on your phone too.
Make it visible, without surveillance
In German public administration, software that could monitor the performance or behaviour of employees usually needs the consent of the staff council (Personalrat). That is why in KlangCity the owner of your organisation decides who sees signals about individual people, in five levels:
- all members,
- the person and the leads (owners and admins),
- the person; the leads only see how many people in each group have a signal, without names,
- only the person,
- nobody, not even the person.
Guests never see signals about people. Signals about projects stay visible at every level. The purpose is set out in the data processing agreement: taking pressure off people and sharing out work, no monitoring of performance or behaviour. For confidential matters there are closed groups. The roles are owner, admin, member and guest.
For data protection, IT and the staff council we have collected 20 questions with honest answers. We send the documents, from the data processing agreement to the concept for a dedicated instance, in the review pack.
Where your data is stored
- App, video calls and speech recognition: our own server at Hostinger in Frankfurt am Main.
- Files and backups: Hetzner in Falkenstein, backed up encrypted every night.
- AI features: For the weekly report, minutes and signal explanations, text goes to Anthropic (USA and other countries), with no training and deleted after 30 days at the latest, except where abuse is suspected. The owner can switch off all AI features with one switch. The signals also work without AI.
- Accounts: Two-factor login, which you can make mandatory for everyone, a list of recent login attempts, retention periods and a data export for each person and the whole organisation.
- Dedicated instance: For the Business plan there is, on request, a dedicated instance just for your administration, with its own server in Germany, its own database and its own keys.
More about logging in and permissions on the page Security and privacy.
Plans and a pilot
Local authorities get the same plans as everyone else:
| Plan | Price | Included |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | free for good | up to 5 people |
| Pro | on request | 10 people, more on request |
| Business | on request | 50 people, more on request, kick-off workshop, SLA |
We confirm the price and invoicing for your country personally. All details on the page Plans and features.
Start small: A pilot doesn’t have to cover the whole administration straight away. Take one project with a small team. Every new organisation can try Pro free for 30 days, with no card and no subscription. After that, Basic stays free for up to five people.
To be honest
- KlangCity is in Early Access. No local authority uses KlangCity yet. Behind KlangCity is a single person in Cologne. That is why there is an exit commitment: if we discontinue KlangCity, we tell you six months in advance, and export works at any time.
- No certification. KlangCity is not certified to ISO 27001 or BSI C5.
- Not there yet: Single sign-on is planned for Q1 2027. We don’t issue e-invoices in the XRechnung format yet.
- No specialist procedures. KlangCity does not cover budgets, funding applications or the council information system. For those you keep using your existing procedures.
- In the browser, as an iPhone app and as an Android app.
Planning a pilot in your administration or in a neighbourhood office? Write to us at support@klangcity.de. Or take a look at the demo city first, without signing up.
Example organisation, no sign-up. Works on your phone too.
Frequently asked questions
Is KlangCity suitable for public administration?
For project teams in departments, municipal enterprises and neighbourhood offices, yes: the servers are in Germany, the data processing agreement is included, and signals about people can be switched off completely. KlangCity is not certified to ISO 27001 or BSI C5.
Does the staff council have to agree?
That depends on how you set up KlangCity, and your administration decides it together with the staff council. If you set the signals about people to “only the person” or “nobody”, the leads see no signals about individual employees. The roles and permissions concept is in the review pack.
Can external planning firms work with us?
As guests they read projects, tasks and the calendar, but cannot change anything and don’t count as people. From Pro, you can bring them into the video call for appointments without an account.
Is there a dedicated instance just for our administration?
Yes, as an add-on to the Business plan: its own server in Germany, its own database, its own keys, operated by us. We quote the price on request.
How do we start a pilot?
Create an organisation and take one project with a small team. You try Pro free for 30 days, with no card and no subscription. After that, Basic stays free for up to five people.