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 of digital programmes
- Unified standards for identity, registers, interfaces
- National platforms instead of many parallel solutions
- Clear responsibility for operations and further development
And that’s exactly where federal states fall short. Here, every municipality often cooks its own little soup. And what might still have worked in the analogue world becomes a major obstacle in the new era. Because to uphold the principles of one-for-all, once-only and interoperability, you need standards.
The World Digital Government Rankings show that federal states often produce good individual solutions, but struggle to standardise and reuse them nationwide. The result: slower pace, fragmented landscapes, limited economies of scale. The OECD puts it roughly like this: the more fragmented responsibilities are, the more centralised digital governance needs to be.
Fortunately, the federal government has recognised this too. Standards and requirements will also ensure more interoperability here in future. It’s just that the time already lost can no longer be made up by Germany this way.
Sources:
OECD (2024/2025): Digital Government Index
OECD (2023): The Path to Becoming a Data-Driven Public Sector
World Digital Government Rankings (2025)
European Commission (2024): DESI – Digital Economy and Society Index
Image: This image was created with AI.
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