How the public sector can profit from the digital transformation
The expanding opportunities of digitization offer many chances not only for companies, but also for communities, municipalities and public authorities. Both contact with citizens and internal communication as well as networking with other entities can be at least partially digitized, thus optimizing organizational structures and workflows.
Appropriate services must also be established for the implementation of the Online Access Act (Onlinezugangsgesetz), which obliges the federal, state and local German authorities to offer their administrative services digitally. The Germany Digitization Index 2023, however, shows that this has only been partially successful to date: The study, conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute, analyzes the state of digitization of public administration at the state level. Although many German states have already made considerable progress, according to the evaluation only slightly more than half of the administrative services of the municipalities examined could be carried out online. In an international comparison, Germany ranks only 18th out of the 27 EU countries in the e-government sector.
Virtual communication platforms such as the German GDPR-compliant alfaview software play an important role in the development toward a digital administrative structure: Communication with citizens and the public is facilitated enormously by conducting citizen consultations, administrative procedures or press conferences online. For internal communication, too, digital office platforms such as alfaview provide major benefits: Teams can work together productively virtually, regardless of their location, using a variety of collaboration tools. This allows employees to adopt new working models with a more flexible work-life balance – which is the only way public administration can remain an attractive employer for qualified professionals in the future.