Digital administration: why the “authority booster” is stuck

Status: 29.12.2022 8:10 a.m

Parental allowance, housing benefit or vehicle registration at the click of a mouse – digital administration was the plan. But nothing will come of it anytime soon. The frustration among the municipalities is great, some go their own way.

By Christian Kretschmer, SWR

Few will be surprised, but in the end it is remarkable how clearly Germany has missed its national digitization goals. Actually, applications to the authorities should be possible from the new year with a click of the mouse – whether parental allowance, building application or residence permit. But of the total of 575 administrative services, only 33 are available online throughout Germany. This was announced by the Federal Ministry of the Interior on request.

The state had five years to implement the Online Access Act, OZG for short. The 575 state services were to be digitized on a division of labor basis: one part directly from the federal government; the majority in a federal program. In each of 14 subject areas, a federal ministry and a federal state take the lead; In addition, there are project municipalities that are involved. So far, so complex.

In order to make better progress in the mammoth project, the federal and state governments agreed on 35 administrative services in the middle of the year, which are to be implemented digitally with priority by the end of the year. However, only three of these “booster services” are available in all federal states, as the Federal Ministry of the Interior reports with reference to the current status from the beginning of November.

Awkward analog workflows

What went wrong? Answers can be found in the annual report of the National Regulatory Control Council. The committee is committed to reducing bureaucracy in Germany. The Council’s list of why the state fails with the OZG is long. In short: sluggish data exchange, countless players involved, software proliferation in the 11,000 German municipalities.

“The biggest point of criticism is that the federal government has not exercised its right to set standards,” says Lutz Goebel, chairman of the Regulatory Control Council. “You can only get a complex software landscape together if you establish common software with interfaces. If you only discuss it and don’t specify anything, that’s bad.”

“Ultimately, this is a coordination failure on the part of the public sector,” summarizes Michael Mätzig, executive director of the city association in Rhineland-Palatinate. Good project management was missing from the start. “Everyone just started digitizing.” It was also missed to question and streamline the processes within the authorities.

A recognition of foreign professional qualifications, for example, includes more than 100 possible individual actions in the OZG. Mätzig complains that some of the administration’s cumbersome analogue workflows have been “digitized 1:1”. Whereby “digital” at the OZG can also mean, as he emphasizes, that an application can be submitted to an authority with a mouse click – but everything else is then processed further on paper.

Frustration in the municipalities

The frustration is correspondingly deep in the municipalities. “The project structure is far too complicated,” says Anne Niedecken, who is responsible for the digitization of the city of Ludwigshafen in Rhineland-Palatinate. This becomes clear with the Online Access Act, especially in the planned implementation based on the division of labour. It works according to the motto: A municipality or a federal state should develop a digital administration solution and then make it available to everyone else.

Only: “What works for a small municipality in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania doesn’t necessarily work for us,” says Niedecken. Because there are still different state laws that affect digitization. In addition – as the Regulatory Control Council also criticizes – there is a lack of uniform software.

“We have digitized federalism,” summarizes the municipal division manager. “It can’t really go well.”

For this reason, only two of the prioritized “booster services” will be available in Ludwigshafen at the turn of the year: vehicle registration and re-registration and BAföG. There is also parental allowance, but that is not yet “completely digital” in Germany, says Niedecken. This means that parents can fill out the application on their PC – but then have to print it out and sign it.

Other services are already available online in Ludwigshafen. But the city is waiting for applications that are being developed elsewhere within the framework of the OZG, especially in the area of ​​the immigration authorities. “Ludwigshafen has a high proportion of immigrants,” says Niedecken. Digital solutions would make everyday life easier for the administration.

Succession arrangements under discussion

In Rhineland-Palatinate, a lot should therefore happen independently. 50 services have now been digitized by local authorities, which are soon to be rolled out throughout the state, says City Day Director Michael Mätzig. Is this where the next wild growth is coming from? No, says Mätzig, at least the neighboring federal states such as Hesse or Saarland are already using the same software.

Municipalities are running out of patience. “We’re under pressure. The citizens are waiting for it,” says Mätzig. “We don’t want to wait any longer for the federal and state governments to develop the services.”

The successor regulation is now being discussed at the federal political level – the OZG 2.0. The online medium Netzpolitik.org recently published a draft of this. However, there are no longer any obligatory deadlines for implementing state digitization.

Lutz Goebel from the National Regulatory Control Council criticizes this and calls for a comprehensive review of the errors: a round table with the federal, state and local authorities so that things run better with OZG 2.0. “Germany will continue to be left behind when it comes to digitization if we just muddle on.”

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