Fire letter to the federal government
Countries draw up an eight-point plan for digitization
03/01/2023 11:47 am
“No more paperwork”: In a fire letter to the federal government, the federal states are calling for more speed in the digitization of the authorities. Above all, there is a lack of planning security, especially with regard to financing. The central concern is the introduction of the citizen ID.
In a fire letter, the 16 federal states called on the federal government to speed up the modernization of the authorities. The responsible state ministers are making concrete proposals in an eight-point paper in order to make faster progress in the digitization of administration and digital citizen services, the Funke newspapers reported. According to the report, the letter is addressed to the top IT chief of the federal government, Markus Richter, who has been the Federal Government Commissioner for Information Technology since 2020.
According to this, the federal states criticize that “due to the excessive formalism” in administrative digitization “the effort involved and the results are not in a balanced relationship to each other”. Concrete projects require the greatest possible planning security, especially with regard to financing.
More user-friendliness, more accessible funding
One of the central proposals in the paper, which was written on the initiative of Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate, is the introduction of a uniform, user-friendly citizen ID valid throughout Germany for a practicable authentication of people to the state. A federal global budget should be established for the operation, maintenance and further development of digital projects.
Bavaria’s digital minister, Judith Gerlach, demanded in the Funke newspapers: “End the paperwork and yellowed index card mentality in German authorities.”