Andreas Leonhardt celebrates 40 years of service

At the age of 16, Andreas Leonhardt began his career at Offenbach City Council on September 1, 1985. His first stage was an apprenticeship as an administrative assistant with a stenosis secretary examination, which he successfully completed three years later.

This was followed by a short stint in the city's training and further education department before the young man, who had always been interested in technology, ended up in the general data processing department - today it would be called the IT department. At that time, storage typewriters were sometimes used, there were a few typewriters with amber-colored monitors and terminals for finance on the mainframe. Together with the head of department at the time, he switched on the first PC in the municipal administration. It quickly became clear that Leonhardt had found his hobbyhorse in IT, a field in which his curiosity, solution-orientation and creativity have not let him go to this day. He underwent a variety of further training courses, including further training as a programmer and network administrator. Taken together, all the training courses qualify the jubilarian as a so-called IT systems engineer.

After 40 years, Leonhardt remembers how, in the early days, one of the first servers, which was installed with 21 floppy disks, was still on his desk. Leonhardt was involved in the first network cabling projects in the former tourist office, the Bernardbau and the town hall, and even held a drill in his hand to cut through the cables.

Of course, times are different today and the areas of application have also become more technically demanding. Today, the main focus is on maintaining and optimizing the complex IT systems and specialist applications used in the citizens' office, taking user requirements into account. To this end, Leonhardt also trains the 75 employees working in the Citizens' Office and is involved in numerous projects, for example relating to the integration of new online services. His aim is to ensure that the Citizens' Office, with around 125,000 customer contacts and around 90,000 online services per year, runs as smoothly and sustainably as possible.

"Andreas Leonhardt is always solution-oriented, a colleague who is highly valued for his helpfulness and sense of humor, and someone whose motto 'don't just talk, do it' can be seen in his work every day," smiles his office manager Martina Fuchs. Without committed and loyal employees like him, who maintains a very large and sustainable network in the administration and beyond, the citizens' office could not run so successfully and smoothly.

The councillor is celebrating a rather rare 40-year anniversary with his colleagues and is delighted that his achievements and commitment have been recognized by the City Treasurer Martin Wilhelm, who is responsible for the Citizens' Office.