Digital Minister
Mehring wants to abolish faxes in Bavaria’s authorities
Fabian Mehring, Digital Minister of Bavaria. photo
© Lennart Preiss/dpa
From the perspective of Bavaria’s new digital minister Mehring, the fax represents a time that no longer exists. He now wants to draw far-reaching consequences from this.
According to his wishes, after a certain transition period, documents in Bavarian authorities should only be transmitted in digital form instead of by fax machine.
“Regardless of the problems with data protection, for many people fax machines have long been a symbol of backwardness in digital transformation,” said the minister. The “Augsburger Allgemeine” had previously reported on it. “Our Bavaria is a high-tech country. We should therefore lead the way nationwide and be the first federal state to pull the plug on faxes in public administration.”
The Federal Office of Administration in Cologne said that in the area of procedural law they saw no legal hurdles to abolishing the fax. “In our opinion, better digital alternatives already exist.” The authority named mailboxes in the federal portal and various official e-access points. However, there are special technical requirements in order to create the necessary legal certainty. Commercially available emails do not meet the formal requirements because neither the sender nor the receipt can be verified. When it comes to deadlines, proof of delivery and the like, increased requirements are placed on electronic communication.
Mehring argued that millions of people in the Free State have long been organizing their lives largely digitally, shopping online, planning their vacation online and also looking for their favorite restaurant there. “It is all the more dangerous for our democracy if the impression arises that the state cannot keep up on the path to the future and is remaining in the past.”
The minister therefore wants to present a catalog of measures to the Bavarian cabinet next year. According to the ministry, the fax ban is part of a strategy with which the digital minister wants to further accelerate the digitalization of the administration in the new year. According to the Free Voters politician, Bavaria is the first federal state that wants to ban fax machines from its authorities and administrations across the board. In the summer, the state government stated the number of fax machines in its administrations at just under 4,000.
“If people are to trust the state, its administration must not appear bureaucratic, outdated or antiquated. Instead, we must create an innovative state that operates at the cutting edge and is perceived as modern so that citizens identify with it positively “Fax machines from the last century don’t fit in with that,” said Mehring.
The fax still plays a major role today, especially in the judiciary. The Bavarian Judges’ Association welcomed Mehring’s initiative: “In times of increasing digitalization, the fax machine has actually become increasingly less important in the judiciary, for example due to the electronic inbox and the progressive introduction of electronic files. Above all, this is not a cause for concern “guaranteed data security when sending documents by fax,” the association said upon request.
However, the abolition of the fax machine for the judiciary in the interest of ensuring justice requires that everyone who seeks access to the courts has the appropriate technical means. “Access to the courts must not be dependent on the currently limited technical possibilities of citizens seeking justice.”