Why Germany struggles to go digital – DW – 12/27/2025 | EUROtoday

When you progress home in Germany, it’s essential to register your new deal with with the authorities. That typically means calling metropolis corridor, ready weeks for an appointment, and exhibiting up in particular person with paper kinds.

Yes, in 2025! And should you neglect your medical insurance card on the medical doctors? Some apps may help — by sending a fax.

“Around three-quarters, 77%, of German companies still use fax machines,” Felix Lesner from Bitkom, Germany’s IT business affiliation, informed DW. “And 25% use it often or very often.”

Why? “Most of the companies state that it’s essential for communication with the public authorities,” Lesner stated. “So maybe this is where the problem lies.”

Falling behind

The European Union often publishes rankings of digital growth amongst member states, with Germany performing someplace in the midst of the 27-nation bloc — at greatest. When it involves e-government, that means digital public providers, the nation lags particularly behind.

A research by CapGemini, a consultancy, ranks Germany twenty fourth inside the European Union.

German engineers invented the programmable pc, the SIM card and MP3 expertise. Yet registering a automotive or getting a wedding license nonetheless means standing in line.

Frank Reinartz, head of the Digital Agency firm in Düsseldorf, informed DW that Germany would not have a problem with technique or targets: “We have an issue with getting things done.”

Düsseldorf, a metropolis of about 650.000 individuals, presents 120 administrative providers on-line out of 580 — simply over 20%. And but, Düsseldorf is thought of digitally superior and ranks in sixth place within the Smart City Index compiled by Bitkom and measuring digital providers in German cities. Berlin, the nation’s capital, had difficulties makeing it into the Top 40.

‘Institutional inflation’

Germany’s federal authorities construction, with 16 states, typically leaves communities to determine their very own options.

“We don’t have much software and processes coming from the federal [state] level,” Reinartz stated. “Each city has to find their own solution for a process which is nationwide, for example, car registration.”

Add to this a scarcity of coordination and what researcher Stefanie Köhl calls “institutional inflation.”

Köhl and her colleagues at SHI Institute in Berlin examined why digital public providers did not actually take off in Germany prior to now 25 years.

“Everybody does something, but only in his or her silo,” Köhl informed DW. “There’s no connection between solutions, sometimes also no compatibility between technologies.”

Reinartz’s Digital Agency was set as much as keep away from this. His imaginative and prescient for Düsseldorf’s digital future facilities on a web site that permits residents entry to each public service on-line.

“You log in and see your building tax, if you are the owner, the kindergarten for your kids, and the parking permit for your car,” Reinartz stated.

Denmark: Digital wonderland

While Germany debates, Denmark delivers. Germany’s northern neighbor has turned Reinartz’s imaginative and prescient into actuality way back.

“The website Borger.dk is a one-stop-shop where all citizens have access to more than 2,000 public services on a digital platform,” stated Jakob Frier of Digital Hub Denmark in Copenhagen.

Almost all the pieces — from taxes to well being care — is on-line. The key’s a compulsory digital ID or eID, Adam Lebech, deputy director-general of Denmark’s Agency for Digital Government, informed DW.

“About 97% of the adult population have eID,” Lebech stated. “And 83% use it at least once a week.”

The digital basis of Denmark’s system is a single identification quantity known as Central Person Register (CPR), which the nation launched in 1968.

“Since we use the same identifier for all systems, it makes data sharing easy,” Lebech stated. “That means we can create seamless services across several authorities. You have to trust the government, of course.”

Though common surveys present nearly all of Danes belief their authorities, Germans are much more skeptical about state-run centralized knowledge gathering due to their nation’s Nazi and East German Communist previous.

Both, Hitler’s Third Reich and East Germany’s Communist social gathering used private knowledge to spy on individuals and management their lives.

How India leapfrogs developments

India has proven that it’s attainable to make huge strides in creating digital providers, establishing its personal digital ID system, known as Aadhaar, inside simply 15 years. Some 99.9% the Indian inhabitants use Aadhaar, official authorities knowledge says.

Meanwhile, Aadhaar is linked to a digital cost platform known as Unified Payment Interface that even avenue distributors promoting coconuts at roadside stalls settle for as cost technique. Customers merely switch the cash through a QR-code and a mobile-phone app.

Tej Paul Bhatla, of India’s largest IT firm, TCS, informed DW that Aadhaar and UPI are “foundational systems” that have been developed with assist from the state but additionally funding from the non-public sector.

Right from the start, Aadhaar and UPI have been deliberate as open-source techniques for personal and public utilization, he stated, just like public infrastructure.

“When you build railroads or highways or ports, you make them available for everybody,” Bhatla stated. He added that this has allowed private-sector initiatives to use these techniques to “build larger services for citizens and businesses, and take advantage of these.”

Bhatla stated digital infrastructure was India’s probability to hurry up progress in order that right now “almost 80% of the adult population has bank accounts.” Without Aadhaar and UPI, he stated, “it would have taken us 48 years to reach the bank account penetration that we have today.”

Better digital infrastructure and an ecosystem of digital providers might additionally spark financial progress in international locations comparable to Germany, Bhatla stated.

“If you don’t grow, you will definitely see threats coming in from other economies,” Bhatla stated, “and life is going to become harder.”

Edited by: Uwe Hessler

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