telecommunications
Digital Minister Mehring wants to abolish faxes in authorities
“Relic from another time”: a fax machine. photo
© Armin Weigel/dpa/Symbolbild
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.
Bavaria’s Digital Minister Fabian Mehring (Free Voters) wants to ban faxes from public administration. “The fax is no longer up-to-date and a relic from another time,” he said, according to his ministry’s statement on Tuesday, which was titled “Mehring has mastered faxing.”
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 take the lead nationwide and be the first federal state to pull the plug on faxes in public administration.”
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, said Mehring. “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“If people are to trust the state, its administration must not appear bureaucratic, outdated or antiquated.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.