Julia Lupp heads the district administrator's staff in the Rheingau-Taunus district and is the founder of Amtshelden – an exchange and training platform for administrations focusing on AI, communication and human resources management. In our latest news blog, the administration expert reports on her key topics for 2026 and explains why these should definitely not be missing from #SCCON26:

"When I think about the Smart Country Convention 2026, I look forward to honest answers to very practical questions – because SCCON brings together all the thought leaders, practitioners, decision-makers and solution providers. Two topics are of particular concern to me. Both come directly from my everyday life between district administration, transformation and Amtshelden practice:

Genuine collaboration and scaling in the public sector

In the public sector, we have become adept at building beacons and showcasing them at conferences – clever pilot projects, innovative tools, impressive individual solutions. The real challenge is how we can achieve greater speed and scale in this area and move from admiration to concrete action, providing rapid and tangible relief for administrations and a genuine experience for citizens. How do we organise collaboration across levels, responsibilities and organisational boundaries in such a way that solutions are truly multiplied? Where do we start with easy levers? How do we get from ten pilot projects to a solution that can work in 300 municipalities? And how do we create structures in which administrations develop, test and learn from each other together – instead of constantly reinventing everything?

Communication determines the success of government transformation

Digitalisation and AI are not IT projects. They are about culture, social change, change management and leadership. This is something that is often overlooked, in my opinion: it is not about the smartest app. It is about how we shape disruption. And that is a communication issue – both internally and externally. In my work, I see time and time again that transformation rarely fails because of technology, but because of a lack of direction. If employees do not understand why something is changing, if leadership does not clearly explain what the goal is, or if communication with citizens consists only of formal announcements, uncertainty arises instead of a new beginning. Good communication creates direction, meaning and trust. It makes change explainable – and thus feasible. At SCCON 26, I would therefore like to see more space for the following questions: How do we communicate change in a way that gets people on board? What role do leadership, storytelling, social media and new formats play in this? How do we create dialogue with citizens in order to derive the right offers and approaches, instead of thinking about digitalisation solely from an administrative perspective?

I am looking forward to an event that is an incubator for genuine, cross-level cooperation and where we use the time to take decisive steps together in tackling the challenges of our time: for employees, for citizens, for our state."