What is wrong with the digitization of public authorities?

Administrations generally face greater hurdles than the private sector when they want to change something. On the one hand, there are legal reasons for this. Many laws are simply difficult to digitize, as can be seen in the Online Access Act (OZG). First of all, a procedural basis had to be created there in order to carry out processes electronically.

Another point is the complex structures in the public sector, which do not favor spontaneous changes. There is also a lack of skilled staff and the time to introduce electronic procedures, especially at the height of the pandemic, when it would have been most urgently needed.

New technologies also have to be put out to tender, which also slows down quick decisions. Of course, the image of "dusty" administration is also familiar in other countries. In Germany, this is compounded by the fact that the system is federal. A citizens' office in Walldorf has its own competencies and is not bound by decisions made by an office in Westphalia-Lippe.

The Corona opening clauses, which vary from state to state, are a good example. Or the OZG, where life situations (i.e., administrative services) have been divided among all the states. Thus, there is a model for an administrative service from each federal state, yet at the same time many municipalities are working on their own solution. The fragmentation of responsibilities makes it difficult to find an overarching consensus on digitization issues.

Even at the federal level, i.e. in the highest authority, there is the departmental principle, which extremely slows down, if not prevents, uniform decisions. Given this example, how are the 14,000 municipalities in Germany supposed to offer a consistent citizen service via OZG? Digitization is only efficient if it is introduced across the board and standardized.

So you would need a cen-tral strategy instead of hundreds of small projects, many of which fail because they cannot be implemented for cost or capacity reasons. Nevertheless, a lot has happened: Corona has been an immense driver of at least fundamental digitization in government. Of course, it is impossible to make up in one year what has been missed over the past 15 years. But the crisis has at least given digitization a major boost.