Anyone in Germany who wants a new identity card or wants to register a car or apply for family benefits needs a lot of patience. They will have to fill various forms in which all types of information will be asked. They may need to visit several different government agencies or offices in person. Everything is complicated; Everything takes time.
However, in 2017, the German federal government committed to digitizing these time-consuming tasks, and it is now possible to complete many of them online.
Yet, when it comes to digital services, Germany lags far behind many other EU member states. The country ranks 21st out of the bloc’s 27 countries in the index compiled by national digital association Bitcom, which measures digital progress across the EU.
Government Modernization Minister
Now, a man from the private sector, Carsten Wildenberger, has been tasked with speeding things up. The 56-year-old is the country’s first federal minister for digitalization and government modernisation.
Wildenberger has been on the job for six months; Prior to this, he was the highly-paid chief executive of major consumer electronics chain MediaMarktSaturn.
His first act as minister was to establish the ministry. A building in West Berlin currently serves as the temporary headquarters. There used to be a car dealership on the ground floor. His staff was drawn from five other ministries and the Chancellor’s Office. Now everything from ensuring federal cybersecurity to streamlining how Germans can apply for a driver’s license online is all under one roof. If another federal ministry starts a digital project, the Wildenberger Ministry is also involved.
At a recent conference in Berlin, Wildburger complained that he often hears people talking about how things should be done and what they want to do. He said, he would love to hear about how they are going to accomplish this, and he would like them to move more quickly.
Wildenberger knows it’s not possible to fix Germany’s allergy to digital progress overnight. In his maiden speech to the Bundestag, the German parliament, in May, he warned, “There is no switch that you can just flip and then everything goes digital and everything is fine.” “Digitalization is a process that requires time, courage, expertise, patience and partners.”
a long list
At the top of Wildenberger’s list of priorities is expanding the availability of fast internet throughout Germany. There is a lot of backlog and the telecom companies are responsible. They invest only where it is profitable for them, and that is mainly in densely populated areas. Despite federal financial support and regulatory pressure, little has changed in that regard.
Wildenberger also wants to tackle data policy, artificial intelligence and digital business models in Germany. He’s also worried that the country’s obsession with data security and privacy is putting the brakes on innovation.
But perhaps the toughest part of his job will be to bring regional officials into the digital realm. A lot of offices literally have shelves and shelves of paper files and folders, and all this information needs to be digitized.
This is not even the biggest challenge. Over the past 15 to 20 years, the federal government, Germany’s 16 state administrations and approximately 11,000 municipalities have developed their own IT systems. Many people are unable to communicate with each other. There is no digital standard. Wildenberger’s ministry estimates that more than 8,000 different systems and portals are in use.
“We’ve built an incredible variety of systems,” Wildburger said.
Earlier the Home Ministry was working on this. A new system called the “Deutschland Stack” or “D-Stack” will offer a standardized IT infrastructure with clearly defined interfaces and cloud services. These are to become the backbone of future government services.
following estonia’s lead
Wildburger is focusing on a few smaller projects with the goal of completing them by the next scheduled federal election in 2029.
Online vehicle registration may become a reality. At the moment, approximately 10 million registrations, deregistrations and reregistrations annually are handled by 400 specialized offices across Germany. These offices are already underfunded, so there is likely to be little opposition to the federal government taking over the service.
Wildenberger said he often faces the question why Germany can’t do as well as Estonia in the digital field. Estonia is considered an icon of digital progress in Europe – all public services are available online.
Residents provide their data to government agencies only once, everyone has a digital ID, and people are able to see who has accessed it. Government institutions share data through a standardized and decentralized system.
Germany is practically “at the other end of that spectrum,” Wildburger said.
To get there, the country doesn’t just need to digitize all the paperwork it stores — it also needs an official agreement between the federal government, state governments, and municipal authorities that allows them to share all their data. That in itself is likely to take a lot of time, Wildburger said.
This article was originally written in German.