Category: Strategie & Innovation
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Imagine you need a benefit and don’t have to do anything for it.
Welcome to the digital future. What if administration just happened — with no application. A vision of the future? No. Because what Germany is now planning as a pilot project with child benefit has long been reality in Estonia. The next stage of digitising government is called: no need to apply. Here’s what’s behind it:…
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Once Only without a central database?
Can’t be done. Can be done! Estonia has been showing for years how it works. The foundation for it is called X-Road. Explained briefly: No central data platform No “everything in one place” Instead, a system that connects existing registers with each other Every authority keeps its own data. But it becomes shareable. And exactly…
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Who’s actually responsible?
People in South Korea no longer have to ask themselves that question. What happens when a relative dies? Not an everyday topic, but one tied to an unexpectedly huge amount of administrative work — in Germany. But how does it work elsewhere? What could the future of administration look like? In South Korea, all these…
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END-TO-END DIGITISATION VIA APP:
WE’RE LOOKING FOR A PILOT MUNICIPALITY. Let’s finally digitise government differently: simple, citizen-friendly, efficient. With one app for all applications. We’re ready, and now we’re looking for municipalities for our pilot project. The goal isn’t “yet another tool”. The goal is one seamless, end-to-end process. What does that mean in concrete terms? Citizens enter their…
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An honest question to all municipalities here:
Why does end-to-end digitisation still take years, really? There’s another way! Big IT projects, long tender processes, complex system landscapes — and in the end you’re often left with isolated solutions or media breaks. But there’s another way. We digitise forms and authority communication for you and your citizens quickly, cost-effectively, predictably, and close to…
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One app for every function?
Can’t be done. And that’s not a bad thing (anymore). Many cities are still trying to build the one big solution: an app that can do everything — service, information, participation, events, and so on. In theory that’s a good idea. It’s just that this one app for everything will never exist, or only in…
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No digitisation without people.
So why aren’t countries investing more in their most important asset? When we talk about digitising government, many people first think of new IT systems, platforms or data spaces. And we do need all of that. But what’s often forgotten: even the best platform is useless if nobody can operate it. Current analyses from the…
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What happens to our data?
Transparency is the key to accepting digitisation. Without transparency, people reject digital government. A current analysis by the Edelman Trust Institute shows: citizens are far more willing to accept digital government services when it’s clear what data is collected, how it’s processed, and who has access to it. International analyses by the OECD also emphasise:…
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Data spaces: the new key to successfully digitising government? What they are and why we need them.
Europe is digitising. Germany too. Right now, though, mostly individual services. For systems that actually communicate with each other, we need data that can be shared securely and efficiently between authorities and services. And that’s often where it falls short. This is exactly where so-called data spaces come in. The idea: data isn’t collected centrally,…
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Over 190 countries now have a national digital government strategy. But what does that actually mean?
First of all: progress is happening in digitising government — worldwide. A digital government strategy is the political and organisational plan through which a state sets out how administration should work digitally. It answers three central questions: 1️⃣ What should be digitised? (e.g. administrative services, registers, identity systems) 2️⃣ How should it be digitised? (e.g.…
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How digital is administration, really, in the IT nation India?
We often talk about Germany here, sometimes Europe, and rarely the US. But how digital is administration in the country that stands for IT expertise like no other? India has built one of the biggest state digital platforms in the world. Instead of developing individual systems like Germany, India relies on big platforms, where more…
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Dead before the first line of code is written.
The underestimated problem of digitising government. Why do so many AI strategies in government fail before things really get going? The Guardian just looked into this with a focus on the UK. The culprit is called: legacy IT. What is it? IT systems from the day before yesterday, some dating back to the 1990s or…
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Why do we still print out applications in 2026?
Because we’ve always done it that way. OZG theme week – Part 3 Many applications are digitised by now. But then have to be printed out again and sent by post after all. Why, exactly? The requirement for a signed document is to blame! Some administrative procedures still legally require “written form” under Section 126…
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Register modernisation: the invisible bottleneck.
OZG theme week – Part 2 Why does real end-to-end digitisation stall? Because data isn’t allowed to flow automatically. The OZG covered 575 services. But without connecting registers, the Once-Only principle stays theory. Instead of data being fed digitally and automatically into a system, or shared with other systems, data often still has to be…
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It’s all just an illusion.
OZG theme week – Part 1 575 administrative services were meant to be digitised through the OZG. More and more of them are now actually “available online”. But in many cases, the supposed success is only an illusion. Look closer, and the digitisation dissolves into file dust. According to the Normenkontrollrat, media-break-free, end-to-end digitisation is…
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Why are Bavaria and Hamburg more successful at digitising government than other states? THESE decisions make the difference.
In the federal system, all German states are formally responsible in equal measure. And yet rankings like the Bitkom state index keep showing: some states are clearly further ahead. Strikingly often at the front: Hamburg and Bavaria. What do they do differently? 1️⃣ Digitisation is a matter for the boss Hamburg bundles digital governance in…
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Imagine you want to build an extension on your house, and the AI says no.
Fiction? Or soon reality? In a digital administration, artificial intelligence is meant to take work off human staff and speed up processes. That also means: filtering, sorting, prioritising applications — or even deciding on them. But how much power is too much? In February 2026, the study “Digital decision-making models in e-government systems” was published…
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Citizens do it better:
What Germany can learn from Thuringia. What needs to change in digitising government? At the big-picture level, governments and politicians know. But what, concretely? And which supposedly small details drive citizens up the wall? To find out, Thuringia did something very smart: it asked the people. After a year, the state is now taking stock.…
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THIS is how AI is now taking work off administration’s hands.
For a long time, AI in the public sector was seen as an experiment. Hardly any authority got real benefit out of the topic. That’s changing right now! AI is increasingly becoming a productive part of everyday administrative work. The focus here isn’t on autonomous decisions, but on assistance: drafting texts and writing summaries pre-checking…
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The most digital US state is…
Utah! Not California, Florida, New York or Texas. But why is that, and what can we in Germany and Europe learn from Utah? In Utah, digitising government isn’t tried out — it’s steered: One-stop government: Utah.gov as THE single point of contact for all citizen matters Citizens of Utah no longer have to ask themselves…
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In Germany it’s easier to win the lottery than to introduce a single platform for all digital government services. But why?
In theory the matter is clear. Every player in digitising government, the federal government and the EU all want citizens to be able to use every administrative service digitally on one platform — with a single login. But so far, that one platform is nothing more than an idea. The problem isn’t the technology. Other…
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The Europe of two speeds:
How digital and analogue the states really are Europe still rarely stands united, and is often diverse — especially when it comes to digitisation. Across Europe, 41% of people have already used their ID to verify themselves online for digital government services. But look at the countries individually, and you get a completely different picture.…
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People are no longer willing to apply for Permit A38 in Undersection 35F on some website.
A current study shows: what people experience when using private apps is exactly what they now expect from government services too. Digital services are fast, intuitive, and available around the clock. We’ve gotten used to banking, shopping and the rest just working, simply and intuitively. Everyday digital life sets the bar for our expectations. And…
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A grade of 4 (out of 6) still means ‘adequate’ — just short of ‘poor’ and far from ‘good’. But why do German companies see digital government so negatively?
These points are currently the biggest obstacles for companies: 1️⃣ Media breaks destroy automation. Even the most digitised, most automated company can’t do anything if the authority demands printed-out PDFs, only allows follow-up questions by email, and requires data to be entered again and again. 2️⃣ Permits slow down innovation and speed For digital business…
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The gold standard of digitising government? Standardisation.
Why uniformity decides success. International comparisons show: countries with high standardisation achieve up to twice the usage rates for digital government services. But why? Because standardisation reduces friction. It makes digital government simpler and more user-friendly. 3 reasons why standards save nerves: One unified digital identity instead of lots of logins Shared data models and…
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Why not every innovation is digitisation, and why the best ideas sometimes end up in the digital basement, gathering dust forever.
A current study on digital innovation strategies in the public sector shows: a lot is being done. But look closer, and many an “innovation” is nothing more than a test balloon — one that floats off after a successful launch and gets forgotten. Innovation usually changes one element of the system — currently, for example,…
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Centralised state or federal state:
Who digitises better? Digitising government is a marathon in which some pull ahead and others struggle to keep up. But why do the speeds differ so much? Even when states are similarly large and wealthy? Structure makes the difference! Centralised states like France or the United Kingdom benefit from clear advantages when digitising: Central steering…
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Just a show?
Why digitisation is sometimes about as real as the cast of a reality-TV show. Every government wants to digitise. Some do it; others seem to. Because when we look behind the facade of digitising government, there’s sometimes more analogue in there than in a video rental shop from 1990. This exact contradiction is what the…
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We keep digitising the same thing, over and over.
What a waste! The NExT study, commissioned by the government, continuously examines the reuse of digitisation solutions in government — that is, whether solutions developed by one authority get adopted by others, the way it’s actually intended and would make economic sense. The result: reuse barely happens. The same technical solution is often developed from…
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German – Officialese, Officialese – German
AI as a translator? Communication is the backbone of government action: applications, follow-up questions, decisions, objections — almost everything in administration is text, language, and interpretation. And this is exactly where problems keep cropping up: because the citizen doesn’t understand the wording in the application, because the founder only gets an answer to her question…