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Tax portal Elster: Digital interface to the tax office
Photo: Marijan Murat / dpa
For many administrative matters, citizens in Germany still have to go to the office - while a large part of banking or insurance matters can be done digitally from home.
And if millions of homeowners are now struggling with their new property tax return, it is not least because they have to bring together data that is officially available, but in no form that could easily be processed electronically.
How do the offices themselves assess the status of their digitization?
A new survey by the management consultancy BCG and the Center for Digital Governance at the Hertie School sheds light on this.
According to this, 52 percent of managers in the public sector believe that digitization is well developed in their respective institution.
At least 63 percent of those surveyed have a digitization strategy.
The authors of the survey contrast this with the perception of citizens and use data from the eGovernment Monitor from last year.
According to this, the satisfaction of the users of electronic administration services was 47 percent - and thus 15 percentage points lower than in the previous year.
The conclusion: Managers in the offices may still be a little too rosy about the digital situation.
Data rarely with great value proposition
The digitization of administration not only refers to external interfaces, it should also make processes within the organization more efficient.
However, only 47 percent of those surveyed stated that the internal processes are digitized.
This affects, among other things, the personnel organization or budget processes.
Only around a third of those surveyed agree with the statement: »Data makes a major contribution to value in our organization«.
143 executives from various areas of public administration were surveyed.
These included, above all, heads of departments, heads of departments and heads of authorities.
A third of them have more than ten years of professional experience outside of public authorities, only eight percent stated that they had never worked outside of the administration.
90 percent of them are civil servants.
The study by BCG and Hertie School investigates the future viability of German administrations - digitization is only one factor, but one with a large external impact.
57 percent of those surveyed consider their institution to be future-proof.
However, the optimism increases with the hierarchical level: 64 percent of the heads of the authorities agreed with this statement, the department heads only 55 percent.
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