Even if it’s tedious: Often, administrative procedures are still dealt with in the same way.
[Rechtehinweis: picture alliance/Ulrich Baumgarten ]
(Photo: picture alliance / Ulrich Baumga)
The majority of Germans prefer to continue going to the office – even if administrative services are available online. This emerges from the new “eGovernment MONITOR 2022”, which is being created by the network for the digital society (Initiative D21) under the auspices of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. It is exclusively available to the Handelsblatt.
Although the digitization of the administration is progressing slowly and more and more services are available online, the existing digital services are only rarely used by the citizens.
“Although the Online Access Act got a lot rolling, we can see that the use of the services has stagnated in recent years,” says Sandy Jahn, who played a leading role in drawing up the study. This means that even if the services are available online, they are rarely used by citizens. Apparently, taking waiting tickets beats the option of dealing with the application yourself at home.
Above all, user-friendliness is becoming more and more of a problem, reports Jahn. This includes, among other things, that you often get into digital dead ends, i.e. at points at which the service that started digitally has to be completed in analogue form – because a signature is missing and a PDF has to be printed out.
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Therefore, most Germans continue to prefer the arduous journey to office. After all, they meet someone there who is familiar with the process and who can be asked questions in an emergency.
However, this year’s report positively emphasizes that, also because of the Online Access Act, more services than ever before are available digitally. In August 2022, 49 of a total of 575 services to be digitized were already fully available online.
It was therefore possible for the first time to compare the use of different digital services. 73 percent of those surveyed have already completed an income tax return online, but only 21 percent have re-registered an apartment online.
Compared to Switzerland and Austria, the option of booking an appointment with the office online is very popular in Germany. On closer inspection, however, this is not surprising: fewer appointments are needed in Switzerland and Austria, since many services can already be carried out from home.
One factor that has been missing in Germany so far is digital, legally secure identification. According to the “eGovernment MONITOR”, only around ten percent of those surveyed use the digital function of the ID card. In the previous year it was nine percent.
So far, many have mistrusted the ID card function or are not even aware that it even exists. The possibility of being able to identify oneself online is a central key for many administrative services. According to the survey, 64 percent of citizens in Austria are already using the state’s digital identification option.
Overall, it can be seen that trust in the state and its digital skills is very low in Germany. Just 14 percent of those surveyed have the impression that the state makes their life easier. Only one in four trusts him to make all administrative procedures available online in the next three years.
A finding that worries experts. Lena Sophie Müller, Managing Director of the D21 initiative, points out: “If the citizens lose so much confidence in the state’s ability to perform, this can also have political consequences in the future.”
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser therefore promises to “make the most important administrative services in Germany quickly available digitally”. She sees the results of the “eGovernment MONITOR” as an incentive to push ahead with the digitization of administration. This is a “permanent task”.
More: Why the state is heading towards an organizational catastrophe with eyes wide open