When you move homes in Germany, you will need to register your new address with the authorities. In Germany, this often means calling city hall, waiting weeks for an appointment, and appearing in person with paper forms.
Yes, in 2025! And if you forget your health insurance card at the doctors? Some apps can help – by sending faxes.
“Almost three quarters, 77%, of German companies still use fax machines,” says Felix Lessner of Bitcom, Germany’s IT industry association. “And 25% use it often or very often.”
Why? “Most companies say this is necessary for communication with public authorities. So perhaps that’s where the problem lies,” he told DW.
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The EU regularly publishes rankings of digital development among member states, with Germany performing somewhere in the middle of the 27-nation group – at best. The country is particularly lagging behind when it comes to e-government, i.e. digital public services.
A study by Capgemini, a consultancy, ranked Germany 24th in the EU.
German engineers invented the programmable computer, SIM cards, and MP3 technology. Yet registering a car or getting a marriage license still means standing in line.
Frank Reinartz, head of a digital agency company in Düsseldorf, says Germany doesn’t have a problem with strategy or goals, “we have a problem with getting things done.”
Düsseldorf, a city of about 650,000 people, offers 120 out of 580 administrative services online – just over 20%. And yet, Düsseldorf is considered digitally advanced and is ranked 6th in the Smart City Index compiled by Bitcom and measuring digital services in German cities. The country’s capital Berlin faced difficulties in making it to the top 40.
‘Institutional inflation’
The structure of Germany’s federal government, with 16 regional states, often leaves local communities to figure out their own solutions.
“We don’t have much software and processes coming from the federal level [state] Level,” Reinertz told DW. ”Each city will have to find its own solution to a process that is nationwide, for example, car registration.”
Add to this a lack of coordination, and you get what researcher Stephanie Kohl calls “institutional inflation.”
Kohl and his colleagues at the SHI Institute in Berlin investigated why, over the past 25 years, digital public services have not really taken off in Germany.
“Everyone does something, but only in their own silo. There is no connection between solutions, sometimes no compatibility even between technologies,” he told DW.
To avoid this, Frank Reinartz’s digital agency was established. His vision for Düsseldorf’s digital future focuses on a website where residents can access every public service online.
“You log in and see your building tax, if you’re an owner, see the kindergarten for your children and the parking permit for your car,” he said.
Denmark: Digital Wonderland
While Germany argues, Denmark defends. Germany’s northern neighbor has long ago turned Reinartz’s vision into reality.
“The website Borger.dk is a one-stop-shop where all citizens have access to more than 2,000 public services on a digital platform,” explains Jacob Fryer of Digital Hub Denmark in Copenhagen.
Almost everything is online, from taxes to health care. The key is a mandatory digital ID, or eID, says Adam Lebcke, deputy director general of Denmark’s Digital Government Agency.
“About 97% of the adult population has an EID. And 83% use it at least once a week,” he told DW.
The digital basis of Denmark’s system is a single-identification number called the Central Persons Register (CPR), which the country had already introduced in 1968.
“Since we use the same identifier for all systems, it makes it easier to share data,” Lebbeck said. “This means we can create seamless services across multiple authorities. You definitely have to trust the government.”
While regular surveys show that most Danes trust their government, Germans are far more skeptical about state-run centralized data gathering due to their Nazi and Communist past.
Both Hitler’s Third Reich and East Germany’s communist rulers used personal data to spy on people and control their lives.
How India leapfrogs and develops
India has shown how it is possible to make great strides in the development of digital services by setting up its own electronic ID system called Aadhaar within just 15 years. According to official government data, about 99.9% of the Indian population uses Aadhaar.
Meanwhile, Aadhaar has been linked to a digital payment platform called UPI (Unified Payment Interface), which is also accepted as a payment method by street vendors selling coconuts in roadside stalls. Customers transfer money simply through a QR code and a mobile phone app.
Tej Paul Bhatla of TCS, India’s largest IT company, told DW that both Aadhaar and UPI were “foundational systems” that were developed with state support as well as private sector funding.
From the very beginning, he said, Aadhaar and UPI were planned as an open-source system similar to public infrastructure for private and public use.
“When you build railroads or highways or ports, you make them available to everyone,” Bhatla said, adding that this has allowed private sector initiatives to use these systems to “create and leverage larger services for citizens and businesses.”
Bhatla said digital infrastructure is an opportunity to accelerate India’s progress, given that today “almost 80% of the adult population has bank accounts.” Without Aadhaar and UPI, “it would have taken us 48 years to reach the level of bank account access we have today.”
Bhatla argues that better digital infrastructure and an ecosystem of digital services can boost economic growth in countries like Germany as well.
“If you don’t grow, you will definitely see threats from other economies, and life will become difficult,” he warned.
Edited by: Uwe Hessler
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