Fast, convenient and easy to understand – private citizens and companies would use services offered by the public administration more often if they could access them easily on the internet from their home computer or mobile device. And businesses hope that digital administration will reduce costs and bureaucratic burdens.

The Online Access Act (Onlinezugangsgesetz – OZG) requires the federal, state and local governments to provide their services in a digital version via their own portals along with the classical formats by the end of 2022. The outline for this large-scale digital project is the OZG Implementation Catalogue, which was initially launched in 2017 with hundreds of administrative services and benefits. Due to the agile and dynamic nature of the OZG implementation, the total number of OZG services is not static and continues to increase.

The services are assessed according to their digital compatibility and their digital potential and are then grouped by category and further divided by life and business events. Arrangeing administrative services and benefits by topic offers users an easier approach compared to listing them by their affiliation to governmental agencies, which was previously the case.

Two digitization programmes

Two digitization programs were set up to implement the Online Access Act: The first ("Digitalisierungsprogramm Bund") covers all services and benefits provided at federal level (Type 1 services). The federal government is responsible for developing a digital version of these services. 115 prioritized services are part of this program. Because the federal government has sole responsibility for passing and enforcing legislation concerning the services and benefits provided at federal level, it does not have to coordinate their online implementation with the state and local governments. As a result, all the services and benefits offered by a federal ministry can be identified and structured according to its executive agencies that provide them and directly implemented as projects for the Online Access Act.

Services provided by the state and local governments (Types 2 to 5) come under the second programme ("Digitalisierungsprogramm Föderal"), that concerns hundreds of administrative services. The different federal states and local governments offer varying versions of benefits, use different forms and software and have more complex divisions of responsibility. The programme for putting state and local services online is therefore organized differently to the one for federal services. In this second programme, the federal, state and local governments work together on all 14 categories and decide how digital versions of the services in each category are developed and implemented.

Experts in the fields of law, IT and administrative organization are developing appropriate solutions in digital labs. One federal ministry and one or more federal states are in charge of each of the 14 categories and are working with interested local governments and IT service providers to develop detailed plans and project outlines for bringing the services in their category online.