digitalization
Baden-Württemberg relies on the digital criminal file
The police and judiciary are testing the common electronic criminal file together in Ulm, which is unique in Germany. Photo: Stefan Puchner/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Mountains of paper files should be a thing of the past for prosecutors and detectives in the future. Baden-Württemberg is testing the digital exchange with a pilot project.
Public prosecutors, judges and police officers in the southwest are rehearsing the farewell to the paper file: With a pilot project in Ulm, the Ministry of Justice and the Interior will in future rely on electronic criminal files.
The cooperation on this scale is unique nationwide, said Justice Minister Marion Gentges (CDU) at the presentation of the project on Tuesday in Ulm.
In a first step, the police headquarters, the public prosecutor’s office and the district court in Ulm use the electronic criminal file, as Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU) said. The digital criminal file in Ulm is to be used extensively by the end of the year. According to Strobl, this should be the case nationwide by 2025.
Via encrypted highway
Electronic files are exchanged between the authorities via an encrypted data highway. In the future, the police and judiciary should be able to access the electronic files at the same time and from different locations. That will also save large amounts of paper, said Strobl. According to an extrapolation, around 50,000 sheets of paper are registered in the post office at the police headquarters in Ulm alone.
Minister of Justice Gentges described the introduction in Ulm as a “milestone for the digitization of the judiciary”. Preparations for the digital exchange have been underway since 2018. The digital criminal file should make the mountains of paper files in court disappear completely. In the future, for example, defense counsel or representatives of private prosecutors should also be able to access the eFile. In addition, the inspection of files via an internet portal of the judiciary should be possible for the whole of Germany.
Costs up to 10 million euros per year
Gentges initially estimated the cost of the project at 1.5 million euros. By the time it is planned to be used nationwide in 2025, there would be additional costs of 10 million euros per year.
The state chairman of the police union, Gundram Lottmann, welcomed the presentation of the eStrafakt that the compatibility of work and family could be further promoted. The electronic criminal file offers the opportunity to further expand home office and mobile working. At the same time, Lottmann criticized the software used as faulty. The exchange has not worked smoothly so far, there are still numerous “teething troubles”, he complained.
Interior Minister Strobl said on Tuesday that those involved had already found and corrected several errors since the first test run in January of this year. So far, around 15 public prosecutors and judges at the district court and 18 employees at the Ulm police headquarters have been working with the digital criminal file. With the findings from Ulm, the introduction throughout the country should succeed step by step by 2025.