Germany is neglecting e-government, electronic administration and government, and is thus leaving important potential for innovation and value creation untapped: This is the conclusion reached by the Expert Commission on Research and Innovation (EFI), headed by Oldenburg economist Christoph Böhringer, in its annual report, which it has now presented to the Federal Chancellor.
The handling of government and administrative processes via electronic media is in urgent need of central coordination, said Prof. Dr Christoph Böhringer at the presentation of the report to Federal Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel and Federal Research Minister Prof. Dr Johanna Wanka on 17 February. "To date, federal, state and local authorities have largely developed their e-government offerings on their own," said the Oldenburg expert. The current experience with registering and managing refugees, for example, shows "how failures in electronic administration - and in particular deficits in the digital networking of federal, state and local government IT systems - can become a problem".
The expert commission refers to international studies that show that Germany is lagging behind most other industrialised nations when it comes to e-government. Böhringer called the offerings "not only very limited, but also not very user-friendly", although the federal, state and local governments had already formulated the claim in a national strategy in 2010 to make German e-government "the international benchmark for effective and efficient administration by 2015".
Even the few existing services are often barely known, as they are spread across hundreds of government websites. Ease of use and assistance from the authorities are also still the exception. And that's not all: many e-government offerings are still not fully available in digital form, meaning that citizens are often unable to process proposals completely on the computer and have to return to paper for certain steps.
These deficits are less due to a lack of financial resources than to a lack of coordination and political will, emphasises the EFI. Estonia, for example, has a very well-developed, user-friendly and largely digitally integrated e-government offering, despite its lower financial strength. "Here, all electronic information and services are already organised by issue and offered in one place and from one source," praises Prof. Dr Christoph Böhringer.
According to the urgent recommendation of the expert commission headed by Prof Dr Dietmar Harhoff from the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich, the German government should play a much more coordinating role in this important digital issue. According to Böhringer, a nationwide electronic portal "E-Germany" should bundle as many "offers from the federal, state and local authorities as possible, organise them according to their purpose and make them available to citizens and companies in a 'one-stop process'" - the federal government should advocate the establishment and expansion of such a nationwide portal to the states and local authorities.
According to the expert commission, this requires binding "milestones" for the federal government, federal states and local authorities. According to the Oldenburg economist Böhringer, a central coordination centre for e-government in the Chancellery is indispensable. It would not work without motivated cooperation between the federal and state governments - "but perhaps the grand coalition offers a good opportunity to move Germany forward here".
Four reasons why the expert commission considers e-government to be worthwhile: It makes visits to authorities superfluous and allows administrative concerns to be bundled. It increases the transparency of administrative processes, for example by making the processing status traceable. It creates a high demand for information technology solutions and can therefore also be a driver of innovation for the IT and internet industry. It increases the attractiveness for companies and is considered an important location factor in international competition.
The Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation (EFI)
Based in Berlin, the EFI provides scientific policy advice to the German government and regularly submits reports on research, innovation and Germany's technological performance. The EFI's main task is to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the German innovation system in an international comparison and over time and to assess the prospects for Germany as a location for research and innovation. On this basis, the EFI develops proposals for national research and innovation policy.
