Sometimes disasters are also good. You can uncover deficits in one fell swoop and create pressure to act that only comes about when everyone realizes that things cannot go on like this. The corona pandemic has mercilessly revealed how far Germany is behind in digitizing the administration at all levels of the state. Schools without WiFi, health authorities that forward their infection numbers by fax, vaccination appointments by telephone hotline, a warning app that turned out to be largely unsuitable when it was finally finished.
In the public perception of the coalition negotiations between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, the issue of climate protection and the still open question of how the alleged new traffic light government actually wants to finance its plans dominate at the moment. But the negotiators have already made it clear in the first point of their exploratory paper under the heading “Modern State and Digital Awakening” that the subject is right at the top of their political agenda – finally, one could say.
It has long been known that Germany is hopelessly behind in the digitization of its administration, but it hardly played a role in the public debate. In all relevant international rankings, the Federal Republic has been at the bottom of the list for years. In the “Digital Economy and Society Index” (Desi) of the EU Commission, Germany is only in 21st place out of 28 nations examined.
Destructive testimony for politics
According to a representative Forsa study that has been carried out every year on behalf of the FDP parliamentary group since 2018, 86 percent of those surveyed want to use online services in the future. But a large majority doubts that this will work in the foreseeable future. Two thirds of German citizens believe that it will only be possible in ten or 20 years to do most of the administrative work online. This is a devastating testimony for politics.
How justified this skepticism is is shown by the slow implementation of the Online Access Act (OZG), which came into force in August 2017. There it was stipulated that a total of 575 administrative services by the federal, state and local authorities should be offered digitally across Germany by the end of 2022. This has currently only been achieved for 16 services, the 2022 target is “no longer achievable”, according to the current report of the National Regulatory Control Council.
This independent advisory body to the federal government for the reduction of bureaucracy, which was created in 2006 and to which ten voluntary members belong, regularly assesses the progress made in digitization. The reports can be reduced to the sobering denominator that although there is goodwill everywhere, the complex federal structures and insufficient human resources have a crippling effect. “Germany is, thinks and acts too complicated,” said a statement by the Regulatory Control Council in September. The inspectors have come up with the word creation for the snail’s pace during digitization, that Germany is “mutinous” – tired and angry.
Now, for the first time in many years, there is a chance that this will change. “The topic has gotten on the political agenda,” says administrative scientist Thurid Hustedt, who teaches at the private Hertie School in Berlin. A few weeks ago, Hustedt, together with 22 other authors from science, administration and various innovation projects, published a position paper calling for a “fundamental cultural change in public administration” and an opening towards society.
The spirit of the old government
The seven-page paper describes eight fields of action for the next federal government. From changing internal work processes to creating a common system architecture for IT, which should be available “openly and freely” to all administrative levels via common standards and interfaces, to effective participation of citizens in political projects. The language of the administration, which communicates with the citizens “as if they were ill-behaved children to be patronized”, must also change. The spirit of the old government still has an effect here. “That is no longer up-to-date and should be changed,” says Hustedt.
It is clear that the modernization of the state is not just about the digitization of services. “The view of what digitization means has to widen,” says Hustedt. It is about developing a culture of error in the administration and, similar to the private sector, “creating innovation units in which people work and think differently”. The administration must also open up in terms of personnel, more external competence is necessary.
It is obvious that massive political support is required for such a difficult cultural change. It is still unclear where the promised modernization of the state in a traffic light coalition will be hung politically and organizationally. Above all, the FDP pleaded for the creation of a new digitization ministry during the failed Jamaica negotiations four years ago.
What at first glance seems logical in view of the abundance of tasks turns out to be problematic on closer inspection. The Regulatory Control Council even speaks of a “sham debate” that obstructs the view of the actual challenges. The administrative scientist Gerhard Hammerschmid, who also teaches at the Hertie School, sees it the same way. The Austrian examined the question of whether a separate digitization ministry was the right solution from an international perspective. It turns out that in Europe only Poland, Greece and Luxembourg have such a ministry. All three countries are at the bottom of the Desi ranking. Worldwide, among the countries that are ahead, only Singapore has its own digitization ministry.
The European pioneers in digitization have taken a different path. You have assigned the topic to a strong classic ministry, usually the Ministry of Economics or the Ministry of Finance. And then they did something that experts consider to be much more important than political allocation: they created powerful, well-staffed digitization agencies for the implementation.
Your own ministry? Takes too long
According to Hammerschmid’s study, “it cannot be seen that a digitization ministry has a positive effect on the digitization progress of a country”. The main disadvantage is “that it takes a long time to set up such a ministry,” he says. Digitization is a cross-sectional task; competencies and personnel must first be relocated from all departments. That would again waste valuable time.
In Germany, political responsibility for digitization has so far been divided into two parts. Administrative digitization lies with the Ministry of the Interior, digital policy with the Chancellery. Hammerschmid advocates pooling political responsibility with the Ministry of Finance in the future. Because with the budget you have the lever in hand to control the necessary tasks.
And these would then have to be implemented by a “strong digitization agency that sets standards and checks whether they are adhered to,” says Hammerschmid. Such an agency must have 200 to 300 employees. And it should ideally be constructed as a GmbH and then work as an in-house agency of the federal government. It is also important not to accommodate this agency in the responsible ministry. It must be made clear that something new is emerging here, with an attractive charisma for the entire administration. “Anyone who wants to become something must have worked there for a while.”
The Regulatory Control Council also advocates such a digitization agency with a staff of several hundred people and sufficient financial resources. It remains to be seen in the next few weeks whether the traffic lights will pull themselves up for such a radical new beginning or get tangled up in the federal undergrowth again. Hammerschmid is optimistic. “This is a unique window of opportunity,” he says, “when, if not now?”