Which municipal administration services people can use online also depends on where they live. A country that has taken up the cause of equal living conditions must not tolerate something like this.
The topic costs time and money and is incredibly unsexy. Nevertheless, even in Bavaria in 2022, the digitization of public administration must be discussed. After all – and this is the good news – things are definitely moving forward. The fact that citizens can now deal with administrative matters from the sofa is more than a step forward in terms of convenience. Ultimately, ideally, digitization accelerates approval procedures and other complex processes, of which we really have enough in this country.
The bad news: The pace of this progress varies greatly from region to region. Whether or not citizens can actually save themselves the hassle of taking their numbers, waiting and going to the town hall depends not least on their place of residence. What works online in one community can be digitally impossible in the neighboring town. Some municipalities have 90, others seven services on the network. A country that is committed to equal living conditions cannot tolerate something like this. The situation may be explainable, for example with the tricky division of tasks between the federal, state and local authorities.
Nevertheless, he fatally fits into the general feeling that he is somehow lagging behind the world’s best in terms of innovative power. The state government can still set up umpteen high-tech agendas and Markus Söder can still attend as many space summits if the future fails due to the bureaucratic details of everyday life.
That’s why it doesn’t help that the digital situation is sometimes better than it seems. Again, the administration is good as an example. Again and again, mayors report that they have finally digitized a town hall service with a lot of effort – only now it is hardly used. Bad self-advertising? User-unfriendly designs? Citizens who are less digitally savvy than they think? Or is the problem perhaps more fundamental: in the form of too many individual solutions and too little motivation to simplify communication with authorities across all offices and political levels?
Enough question marks for further discussions – which the Free State also has to face more persistently than before. Elections cannot be won that way. It could still be worth it.