The OZG and its significance for digitalization in Germany
For many decades, Germany was internationally regarded as a role model for innovation and progress. Whether industry, economy or administration, in direct comparison the Federal Republic was always among Europe's top candidates.
But that has changed strongly. Because of all things, at probably the most important momentum of the modern era, Germany missed the start almost completely: digital transformation.
The Online Access Act (OZG) is meant to make up for this omission and become the driving force of important change processes in the context of digitalization. The focus is on the federal government, states and municipalities, which are supposed to make their administrative services accessible online for citizens and companies.
We'll tell you what's behind it and what opportunities the OZG offers for Germany's future.
State of digitalization in Germany
Do you know those social media posts in which people make fun of the fact that their citizens' office only accepts online forms in printed form? Or that the mobile reception in a vast national park in South Africa is significantly better than in some German big cities?
Be it the broadband expansion, modern e-health services or the fact that for most dealings with authorities a literal trip to the office is still required – especially with state structures, Germany has shown the agility of a sleeping beauty when it comes to digitalization.
Forms pile up in German authorities. The Online Access Act is meant to change this in the future.
According to the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), the Federal Republic ranks 21st in important key areas like digital public services or coverage with very-high-capacity networks. In the use of e-government services by citizens and companies, it's only enough for 26th place Europe-wide, with a rate of 49%.
In international comparison, Germany, with its state digitalization process, is thus rather in the lower midfield, instead of standing out as a leader as one of the largest EU economies.
Effects of the corona pandemic on state digitalization
The worldwide pandemic of the Covid-19 virus additionally sharpened politics' awareness of the structural deficits of Germany.
On the one hand, the radical changes and restrictions that came with fighting the corona virus acted like a catalyst for the digital transformation of society. On the other hand, this also made the catch-up needs in many state and public-law areas obvious.
Federal government, states and municipalities had to switch their internal processes to mobile working from one day to the next. In the process, thousands of employees were not only annoyed by terrible internet reception and missing equipment in the home office.
The systematic weak points and the immense catch-up needs showed above all in the 11,000 municipalities. Town halls and citizens' offices were partly closed until further notice. The simplest online procedures and applications at authorities drove users to despair because of rigid or non-functioning websites. Not to mention the deficiencies in data exchange between health authorities and state institutions to contain the pandemic. And those are just a few of many examples.
Public sector employees were suddenly no longer allowed to process applications on site. The federal government, states and municipalities weren't prepared for this switch – the frustration of citizens followed.
A look over the fence to other European neighbors could almost make one wistful in this phase. Because in countries like Austria or the Balkan states, where digitalization has already advanced further, citizens could better reconcile their professional and private needs with the new conditions of the crisis. No wonder – those who can handle everything online at least have an option.
But for many German citizens, the pandemic had created a situation in which they had access to the state administrative apparatus neither in real life nor in digital form. A circumstance that pressed the finger even deeper into the open wound of the digitalization backlog.
What is the Online Access Act?
The lived disadvantages from systematic omissions, the high expectations of citizens as well as the responsibility toward the European Union increasingly put politics under pressure to act in recent years.
Even if the German economy is already making strong progress, especially in modern sectors like information and communication technology or vehicle construction, there's still much catch-up needed in the digital transformation of the state infrastructure.
To do justice to this pressure to act, the Bundestag passed the Online Access Act, OZG for short, in 2017. The idea is to usher in the turning point toward the digital sovereignty of administration with a more sustainable digitalization strategy and accompanying measures.
Which goals are to be pursued with the OZG?
For the federal government, states and municipalities, the Online Access Act means that they have to offer their administrative services digitally in addition to the analog form by the end of 2022.
All elaborations and results of the federal government, states and municipalities on these administrative procedures are bundled and made available in a shared portal, the OZG information platform.
Implementing the OZG is at the same time an important basis for the Single Digital Gateway (SDG) resolution of the European Parliament. According to it, the most important administrative services should be electronically executable Europe-wide by 2023.
In summary, the Online Access Act thus has the following functions:
- Important public administrative procedures should also be electronically executable for citizens and companies by the end of 2022;
- For this, a portal network is created at the federal, state and municipal level to enable a transparent interaction between state, citizens and companies;
- Along with this, administration-internal processes are optimized and reorganized across levels;
- States, municipalities and cities expand their expertise in the area of digitalization and thereby benefit from a new digital sovereignty;
- For Germany's citizens as users, dealings with authorities are to be significantly eased and made more flexible;
- The Federal Republic thus wants to create a basis for its obligations toward the European Union in digitalization measures.
Basically, the OZG is thus the legal basis for an active modernization and digitalization of the state administrative apparatus.
How is the Online Access Act realized?
Implementing the Online Access Act is, in effect, teamwork par excellence, because the federal government, states and municipalities work together and proportionally on realizing the digitalization administration.
The principle here is the „one for all“ model. That is, each solution or topic is to be worked out only once by one responsible party in coordinated collaboration and then made available to everyone. Tandem cooperations are formed between states and departments, as well as possibly municipal partners. This approach is not only resource-saving, but above all user-oriented too.
Because the aspect of user-friendliness is especially in focus in the digital transformation toward e-government. The offered digital administrative services should be easy to use, barrier-free and secure for citizens and companies. The plan is that a user of the OZG platform can access all services with just a single account. Regardless of which state or municipality the user belongs to.
The offered services include the most diverse procedures, like re-registering a motor vehicle, registering a company, all the way to applying for social benefits. In total, this results in 575 so-called OZG services, which were summarized in a catalog and assigned to 14 topic areas like work, environment or health. Each of the federal states works on one focus area. In addition, 14 digitalization labs consisting of experts, designers and users are to accompany the implementation of the elaborations into the everyday practice of authorities and users.
According to the law, services only count as virtually implemented when they've reached at least the second stage in the maturity model. That is, an official offer is only an OZG service once it can be applied for online by citizens or companies. That also applies to those services where, in the subsequent administrative process, analog evidence may still be required.
A major challenge here is creating a suitable infrastructure that enables the reuse and constant updating of worked-out concepts and processes for all states and municipalities.
What is the current state of implementing the Online Access Act?
Almost 4 years have now passed since the resolution of the Online Access Act, and not much time remains until the planned deadline at the end of 2022. A good opportunity for a look at the interim status of the mammoth project.
Federal government and IT Council accelerate the approach
After the outbreak of the corona pandemic showed the shortcomings in administration digitalization more clearly than ever, the federal government shifted up a gear in implementing the Online Access Act.
This showed, among other things, in the economic stimulus package passed in June 2020, which earmarks around 3 billion euros for the digitalization of state administration in the context of the OZG. To enable an efficient and federal distribution of these funds, the IT Council drafted a unanimous resolution at the end of September 2020 on the allocation of the financial support.
Transparent reporting on implementation
Via the OZG dashboard, users can see the progress in real time of the federal government, states and municipalities in working out the virtual OZG services. According to the current state (April 1, 2021), of the planned 575 online procedures, 315 are already available. 115 are currently in implementation, while the remaining 145 are being planned.
The OZG dashboard shows the current implementation progress of the Online Access Act.
Need for action especially for municipalities
The study “Moving Forward Digitally”, carried out on behalf of the Competence Center for Public IT (ÖFIT) and the Municipal Joint Office for Administrative Management (KGSt), shows that the OZG calls up new challenges especially for the municipalities. Because the administrations, which have to digitalize both their internal structures and their external services for citizens and companies, need special digitalization strategies for this. But such a concept was addressed in just 59% of municipalities in 2020. Of these, only 14% of these digitalization strategies were actually completed, the remaining 45% are still in development. On top of that come aspects like the lack of professionally trained personnel and the limited communication between individual institutions.
So while the federal government and states set a brisk pace in implementation, many of the 11,000 municipalities are still in the early stages of switching their processes even 4 years after the OZG was enacted. But considering that it's exactly these municipalities in which a large part of the OZG services for Germany's citizens have to be delivered, there's an urgent need for optimization here.
To what extent the passed stimulus package can provide relief for the states here isn't yet foreseeable. An important factor for success, however, could be inter-municipal collaboration. Entirely in the spirit of the „one for all“ principle, municipalities too should pool their competencies and resources to save costs and achieve faster results in administration digitalization. In this process, it's advisable to draw on facilitated collaboration objectively coordinated by experienced experts.
What significance does the Online Access Act have for the digitalization of Germany
The Online Access Act systematically unites the pulling power of the federal government, states and municipalities to give state digitalization a proper push in organized collaboration. But even if all involved work motivatedly on keeping the set deadline at the end of 2022 – fulfilling the OZG shouldn't be confused with an end to all of Germany's digitalization efforts. The digitalization of administrative services is much more one of many important building blocks on the path of the Federal Republic's digital transformation.
As a management and technology consultancy, grandega supports the federal government, states and municipalities in developing and implementing sustainable digitalization strategies. Be it facilitating inter-municipal collaboration or the fundamental definition of what digitalization even means for one's own municipality – as specialists for digital transformation, we're happy to support you.
