Between interactive whiteboards and open source: Digital literacy for schools in Chemnitz

Saxony's third-largest city has been a pioneer in education for a long time. Examples include Gustav Zeuner, a native of Chemnitz who founded thermodynamics in Germany, and Johann Traugott Sterzel, who shaped scientific and museum education in the region.

During the division of Germany, Chemnitz, temporarily renamed Karl-Marx-Stadt, became a model project for polytechnic education intended to promote practical learning in the GDR.

Today, Chemnitz's schools are primarily focused on digitalization. In December 2024, the school computer center and Mayor Ralph Burghart put the last interactive whiteboard into operation. This marked the end of the five-year DigitalPakt Schule program, which promoted the digitization of educational institutions throughout Germany. However, Chemnitz had already laid the foundation for this 20 years earlier — the school computer center has been in existence for that long.

To professionally administer the growing amount of technology in municipal schools, a system solution was created for the city of Chemnitz in 2004. Today, SyS-C stands for the School Computer Center team. The project was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the European Social Fund, and in 2009, the city received the Public-Private Partnership Innovation Award for it.

Four points were particularly important:

homogenization and networking of school IT, central administration, a uniform support culture, and relief for educational IT coordinators (PITKOs). In the early years, the small team of three was able to handle all IT issues. However, as demands increased and the number of schools to support grew, they soon had to look for a new, supportive solution. 

They wanted to better organize incoming support requests and tasks for new installations at schools. For this reason, the team introduced the open-source software KIX as a ticket system in 2013. The employees were already familiar with OTRS, and the proximity of the provider was an added advantage. Sebastian Klost, the head of the school computer center, and his team had ambitious plans for KIX. 

In addition to topics such as end device support and infrastructure, they wanted to include planning for new and replacement equipment and related tasks. However, the goals were too ambitious. The team was too small, and the range of tasks was too broad. "Unfortunately, we didn't have the capacity to maintain our KIX system and utilize its capabilities. But we didn't want to give up on it either — we knew how valuable it was," said Michael Edler from the IT administration department at SyS-C.

Despite the circumstances, the small SyS-C team wanted to expand KIX from a simple ticket system to an ITSM solution. The turning point came in 2022. The SyS-C team grew to 15 people. With the increase in employees and organizational changes, as well as the growing number of schools, Edler von der Planitz and his colleagues decided to take a different approach. They decided to update the ticket system and use it more intensively. "The new version, KIX 18, with its modified design, offered a good opportunity to reorganize support tasks."

During the KIX 18 training period, the SyS-C team relied on the support and advice of KIX Service Software. However, the learning curve was not quite as steep thanks to the knowledge gained from the previous version. After just a few weeks, all colleagues had mastered the new system.

Today, the school computer center supports 83 schools in Chemnitz, including 42 elementary schools, 15 middle schools, seven high schools, 12 special education schools, and seven vocational schools. More than 27,000 users belong to the network, including students, teachers, and staff. The school computer center also manages an enormous number of end devices: over 6,000 computers, 9,500 tablets, 1,700 Apple TVs, 90 Mac Minis, 600 servers, and 350 printers. Additionally, there are 500 switches and around 2,400 access points.

Additionally, the school computer center collaborates with the Chemnitz Media Education Center to operate a showroom for training and testing scenarios. This location exemplifies the trusting cooperation between IT professionals and educational specialists. Employees of the school computer center primarily use KIX software to communicate with PITKOs, teachers, and staff regarding all software- and hardware-related matters. They also communicate with contractors involved in replacement equipment and new installations, including planning offices, IT companies, and construction companies. If a problem cannot be solved directly, such as with defective hardware, the tickets are seamlessly forwarded to the relevant manufacturer's support team.

Michael Edler from Planitz says the new system quickly became the central point of contact for all tasks: "Users can reach us in various ways: by email, phone, or via the web. All planning comes together in the ITSM solution. At the same time, KIX's open-source capabilities allowed us to integrate an IT stack with Univention and Opsi, for example. It works really well." SyS-C processes around 350 tickets per month. Communication with all partners, including documentation, is possible directly in KIX. All employees can track progress at any time, such as when malfunctions or defective technology arise.

"It is particularly helpful that KIX allows teams to be divided up. This enables us to process tickets and incoming tasks much more efficiently, even across team boundaries," says Edler von der Planitz. Work has also become much more pleasant and transparent for the PITKOs. They can use the self-service portal to track the progress of their requests. This gives them a better overview at all times and has greatly reduced the number of emails and inquiries for SyS-C employees.

The team intends to continue this trend in the coming years. The self-service portal will be expanded further as a central interface for users to reduce email notifications even more. There are also plans to set up an asset management system with KIX serving as the central CMDB.

Additionally, they plan to establish processes that will bring more structure to certain procedures, such as onboarding and offboarding teachers, submitting damage reports for equipment, and filing warranty claims. Furthermore, additional administrative units and services of the City of Chemnitz will be integrated to facilitate collaboration.

Michael Edler from Planitz is relaxed about these tasks: “We were looking for a system with different access routes, asset management, FAQs, and the provision of key figures and we found all of that in KIX. Getting started is intuitive, and it has made our work and the work of the users more efficient. I'm looking forward to using the system more intensively.

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