Berlin When Florian Stegmann steps up to the lectern, a small detail on his t-shirt shows the enormous expectations attached to the project he will be presenting. It’s mid-June and the head of the Baden-Württemberg state chancellery has traveled from Stuttgart to Berlin to announce a small revolution.
The Baden-Württemberg state administration is getting a digital assistant that will use artificial intelligence (AI) to make text work easier for officials. That’s why Stegmann’s T-shirt now reads: “The Länd”. The message: The “Ländle” should get a digital update.
Baden-Württemberg developed the digital assistant in cooperation with the tech company Aleph Alpha from Heidelberg. The project has attracted a lot of attention. The State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Markus Richter, is there to take a look at the small revolution and to apply it as quickly as possible. In his function, Richter is something like the digital chief of the federal government.
At first glance, “F13”, as the AI assistant is called, seems quite unspectacular. He can summarize texts of different lengths and create notes. Simple but efficient, that’s the promise.
Another reason why the program is getting so much attention is that there are high hopes for technologies like this. The German administration faces an enormous shortage of staff when the baby boomer generation retires. According to forecasts by consulting firm McKinsey, the public sector will be short of around 840,000 full-time professionals by 2030. At the moment there are around 360,000.
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In many places, AI should therefore keep the state running. “Digitization is the only way the administration can solve its specialist issue,” says Thomas Meuche, head of the Competence Center for Digital Administration at Hof University.
Evers wants to make the capital a role model for AI in administration.
(Photo: dpa)
So far, German offices have hardly attracted attention due to their modernity and digital structures. Therefore, the big question arises: What has to happen for AI to really be able to save the administration?
Digital backlog in the capital
In many places in Germany, citizens are already coming into contact with AI when they contact the administration. Municipalities, for example, use chatbots that provide answers to simple questions such as opening times. With language models such as ChatGPT, the chatbots could also answer more complex questions and, ideally, save you having to go to the Citizens’ Registration Office.
The need for digital relief is particularly evident in Berlin. The authorities often cannot keep up with their work – it takes many months to get an appointment with the authorities.
Finance Senator Stefan Evers promises that AI will now also make administration “better and faster” in the capital. The CDU politician also owes his office to the frustration with the capital’s bureaucracy. His party campaigned for a “better” and “digital” Berlin in the Senate elections in February.
The hope is that AI will reduce the mountains of files in courts and tax offices.
(Photo: imago stock&people)
Now Evers has to deliver. Berlin should become a role model for AI in administration. In the capital alone, there are currently 7,000 vacancies in administration, and by 2031 it is expected that 40,000 of the approximately 130,000 employees will retire due to age. “AI processes will help to relieve employees,” says Evers.
Even today, one could no longer do without it in financial administration, he reports. Taxpayers throughout Germany have been submitting their tax returns digitally using the Elster software since 2005. This is already a huge relief for the administration. “AI looks for anomalies in tax returns,” explains Evers. A tax officer only looks at it when the AI has noticed something.
Frankfurt District Court wants to reduce mountains of files with AI
“But there is still a long way to go before everything runs digitally.” There are still fax machines and printers in his office – especially for the exchange with the other administrations in Berlin, many of which still work with paper and files.
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In order to free itself from mountains of files, the Frankfurt district court is currently testing an AI to support judges in so-called passenger procedures. Airlines have to pay a refund in certain cases in the event of horrendous flight delays or cancellations. More than 10,000 such cases ended up in court in Frankfurt alone last year.
A judge has to deal with each case for around three hours on average. The AI Frauke, which is currently being tested, is intended to shorten the time. It prepares the essential points of a case – for example which flight was affected and the reason for the delay. Based on existing judgements, the software can also make suggestions for wording a decision.
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Florian Köbler is also hoping for a similar relief. The head of the German tax union is currently lobbying for a “tax revolution”. According to a position paper, in 2030 the tax administration will have to make do with around a third fewer staff due to the shortage of skilled workers.
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He therefore also calls for investments in AI projects. His wish: AI-supported tax audit software should be able to access the company’s accounting in real time. Algorithms could thus continuously check the accounting – “not just every 70 years, as is currently the case with very small companies,” says Köbler.
Federal register wants to digitize dozens of registers
According to experts, the question of which data offices can access is central. Because without the necessary information, software cannot work. “The main work that needs to be done now is not to program AI models, but to process the data properly,” management expert Meuche points out. This includes recognizing and digitizing signatures on birth certificates that are more than 50 years old.
The federal government has therefore decided to digitize and link the dozens of registers in Germany – for example the registry or residents’ registration offices and authorities such as the real estate cadastre.
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In the case of property tax, for example, millions of homeowners had to obtain an extract from the land register because the authorities did not know which documents they had. “The goal is for everything to work automatically,” says Jonas Brandhorst, AI expert at the German Association of Civil Servants. Anyone who has a child, for example, will then receive everything automatically, from registration to membership in statutory health insurance, instead of having to go through the individual places.
But his prognosis dashed hope that AI would soon have enough data to significantly relieve the administration. His forecast for register modernization: “It will be many years before that happens.”
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