Access to administrative services via the Internet does not seem to be progressing in this country.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin It is actually the most important promise made by the traffic light government, at least when it comes to the prioritization in the coalition agreement: The first chapter of the agreement reads “Modern state, digital awakening and innovation”. So far, however, there has been little sign of the digitization of the state. The topic is at the bottom of the Berlin agenda and was not mentioned in the coalition committee.
But therein lies a danger. The employer-friendly Institute of German Economics (IW) in Cologne fears that Germany is losing further ground in international comparison when it comes to digitizing its administration. And a new study comes to the conclusion: “The digitization of administration is not making any progress in Germany.”
At the moment, the country is in the lower midfield compared to the other EU countries, ranking 18th out of 27 and thus behind the EU-wide average. In the previous year, 2021, Germany was still ahead of Belgium and the Czech Republic. But since then, apparently more has been done for digital administration in both countries than in Germany.
Eastern Europe is catching up
According to the IW, Germany is at risk of being passed further down. “If countries like Bulgaria, Romania and Greece, which are currently behind us in the rankings, implement the technical solutions, they could soon overtake us,” warns Klaus-Heiner Röhl, author of the study and Senior Economist for SME policy and regional policy at the IW.
At the moment, the technology is still missing in these countries, but there are not as many concerns as in Germany.
The study describes the Online Access Act (OZG), which was supposed to advance digitization, as a “failure”. Of the goal of making 575 administrative services available online by the end of 2022, only 18 percent were implemented.
>> Read here: Federal government leaves timetable for digitization of administration open
Attempts were made to provide online masks for historically grown analogue administrative processes instead of “using digitization for a fundamental redesign of administrative processes in the digital world”.
The digital politician and deputy chairwoman of the Union faction in the Bundestag, Nadine Schön (CDU), therefore urgently calls for the promotion of digital data exchange. So far, the traffic light coalition has not made any progress in administrative digitalization, it needs a driver for the topic. Beautifully criticized: “Federal Minister of the Interior Faeser, as the responsible minister, is not that.” The interior and digital politician Misbah Khan (Greens), on the other hand, criticizes the previous Union-led government: “What went wrong in more than ten years cannot be repaired overnight. “
Infringement proceedings threatened
The fact that Germany is lagging behind more and more in a European comparison could soon have serious consequences. Because at the end of 2023, the so-called EU Single Digital Gateway Regulation will come into force, which prescribes 75 state services that must also be available online for citizens of other EU countries. If Germany does not manage to meet this condition, there is a risk of infringement proceedings.
How far the authorities have come in implementing the required services is difficult to understand from the outside. The green digital politician Misbah Khan is therefore calling for more transparency, better prioritization and a more ambitious approach.
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