This week, the federal government presented the draft law to amend the Federal Access Act, BZG for short. What the grand coalition tried to establish in 2017 must now be pushed forward. The goal is still the end of the paper economy through the development of a digital and at the same time user-friendly administration. The current traffic light alliance is committed to this BZG 2.0 no deadline. Only Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faser said that a deadline of 2024 was planned for 15 important services.
Draft law as a “milestone on the way to a digital state”
Citizens would be more likely to use electronic administrative services if they could be used via mobile applications. In the text of the law, the corresponding paragraph on mobile applications states that these “increase the usage rate of online offers because they take into account the everyday reality of citizens when using online offers”. It is hoped that there will be an increased rate of dealing with administrative matters online. As examples, the federal government uses the classic administrative procedures such as re-registration, building permits or marriage and the application for parental allowance. In order to minimize paperwork, it is also possible to submit evidence for an application only once using the once-only principle. These can then be called up electronically by the competent authorities and do not have to be submitted twice or three times, as is unfortunately the case in many cases (see ).
One ID for everyone
The BundID is aimed at all German citizens and companies. This has been in the starting blocks as a digital citizen account since 2019, so far in a state affair. But this is about to change. The new draft intends to push for a nationwide solution. It is an account with an integrated mailbox for government mail.
Draft law on BZG 2.0
A manual signature is no longer required. With the online ID function of the ID card, all services can be applied for in future in a legally secure, simple and uniform manner.”
So far, however, there has not been a great deal of interest, because a large proportion of the authorities are still not working digitally. A sudden increase was due to the one-time payment of the Energy flat rate to students and technical students via the BundID. The obligation to exchange old driver’s licenses could also cause a sharp increase again.
criticisms
It is still unclear when the digitization project will be implemented in the individual municipalities. The lack of a deadline for this is taken up in many places as the greatest point of criticism.
The President of the Bitkom industry association, Achim Berg, called the draft “no OZG 2.0, but at most an OZG 1.1”. The federal government is taking too much time and is not making enough progress with digitization.
Criticism also comes from the National Regulatory Control Council. The planned measures are not comprehensive enough. There would be no explicit obligation to “end-to-end digitization”. A separate app store for federal institutions is the method of choice (see ). The usability of the AusweisApp also needs to be worked on. This represents a comparatively secure way of identifying oneself using an NFC-enabled smartphone and the e-ID card.