The majority of Germans are not aware of the existence of many of the available eGovernment services, according to a report by Initiative D21. This Berlin-based think tank published its sixth ‘eGovernment Monitor’ in July, showing that the use of eGovernment services in Germany lags far behind that in Switzerland, Austria and Sweden.
The main reason for not-using eGovernment services is that citizens don’t find them when using Internet search engines, the report explains. Moreover, citizens won’t find new eGovernment services; unaware of their existence, citizens will not search for them. Almost 60% of all citizens use search engines to find such information.
Germany’s most-popular online public service is public transport timetables, followed by the opening hours and contact details of public administrations. “Prestige projects such as De-Mail or the new identity card limp far behind”, writes Heise, a German IT news site.
According to the report, the majority of Germany’s Internet users (58%) would like a ‘digital citizens account’, that unifies as many eGovernment services as possible and makes the filling-out of forms as simple as possible.
Working groups
“The results of the report are discomforting”, writes Germany’s then-Chief Information Officer Cornelia Rogall-Grothe in the reports management summary. To fix the problems signalled in the report, all stakeholders should work together, she writes. How to improve the use of eGovernment services should be a main topic of discussion for the country’s Digital Agenda working groups, she says.
The ‘eGovernment Monitor’ is the outcome of online interviews with 1000 German and 1000 Swedish citizens, and another 1001 interviews in Austria and Switzerland each. The first monitor was published in 2011.
More information:
Press announcement for the eGovernment monitor (in German)
eGovernment monitor report (in German, PDF)
Heise news item (in German)