The German government is planning a fundamental change in strategy for the digitization of the German administration. In the future, it wants to force federal, state and local authorities to use the federal ID for their digital offerings. With this digital account, all citizens should be able to identify themselves online in order to submit applications, for example, for the renewal of their identity card or for the registration of a vehicle. Financial aid from the state is also to run through this account. This is the core of the new Online Access Act (OZG), which the cabinet wants to adopt on Wednesday.
Corinna Budras
Business correspondent in Berlin.
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Recently, around 3.5 million students in particular had to deal with the Bund ID when they were able to apply for the long-awaited one-off payments of 200 euros in addition to their increased heating costs in the spring. For this population group, the disbursement of this aid was particularly difficult because it is not centrally registered anywhere. That is why the federal and state governments have decided to make this the first nationwide use case for the federal ID.
If you want to set up such an account, you can do so on the corresponding website id.bund.de. To do this, you need your identity card or a residence permit. These documents are now equipped with an online function across the board. In addition, a personal PIN is required, which is usually sent after the identity document has been issued. If the PIN has been lost, it can be reapplied for online at any time. The ID card can be scanned via smartphone using the "ID card app2".
Getting out of the niche
The Bund-ID account has been around since 2019, but so far it has led a shadowy existence. The responsible state secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Markus Richter, praises it as the "safest procedure in the world". In the meantime, there are already around 60 digital services that work with the procedure: If you have a federal ID, you can, for example, apply for Bafög or unemployment benefit or request a certificate of good conduct.
But it was the state support for students that brought the breakthrough for the Bund-ID account, and the number of users has also risen exponentially since then: In the meantime, 2.8 million citizens have already set up such an account. Compared to other countries with sophisticated digital solutions, this number is still modest, but this is a significant increase compared to last year, says Richter, who is also Germany's "Chief Information Officer". He praised the speed of the procedure: Once the accounts are set up, the money can be paid out in many cases within just 24 hours, Richter explained. "This is absolutely record-breaking." It is now conceivable that the procedure could also be used for other payments, for example in connection with the planned climate money.
However, more than one million students seem to have missed the offer so far: Of the 2.4 million applications, 2.4 million have been approved and just as many have been paid out, according to the OZG dashboard. This adds up to 482 million euros. However, around 1.1 million beneficiaries have still not submitted an application.
Bitter defeat last year
With the new edition of the OZG, the federal government wants to overcome its defeat at the first attempt, which has brought it a lot of malice. In December, the federal, state and local governments had to admit that they were unable to achieve the goal set five years ago of offering almost 2022 public administration services online by the end of 600. At the end of the year, only a fraction of the selected services were available.
The reason for this was that the countries went their separate ways when it came to digitization for a long time. The result was a hodgepodge of different solutions to the same problems. Only the OZG tried to bundle the efforts. This was done with the help of the principle of "one for all". After that, the federal states divide the digitization tasks among themselves and then make the developed solutions available to each other. For example, Saxony-Anhalt developed the digital solution for the one-off payment of students. The Bund-ID was developed by Bavaria.
With the OZG 2.0, on which the cabinet wants to agree on Wednesday, a new level of liability is now to be reached: For the first time, it is stipulated by law that the federal, state and local governments must install the nationwide user account in all administrative services. This is to ensure that the offers are available nationwide and uniformly. In addition to the approximately 60 services for which this is already the case, a further sixteen central administrative services are to be offered online next year. This includes the building application, the issuance of the identity card, the registration of a car and the re-registration after a move.
After the decision of the cabinet, the parliament will deal with the project. The Federal Ministry of the Interior hopes that the legislative process will be completed this year and that the new regulations will come into force on 1 January. However, the countries must also participate. So far, only 11 federal states have explicitly declared that they want to adopt the Bund ID.