Digitalization in the German Administration

September 21, 2022 Johannes Wellhöfer

Of media disruption, accessory human unhappyness and structures that need changing.

Part 1

(See if the format won’t annoy the shit out of you)

(So how do you like the format so far? its annoying and stupid? I agree with you! No searching the text, maybe you can’t read all of the words because of my handwriting.)

(You are still here? I’m proud of you. You know I - compared to the states administration - can’t force you to engage with this shitty way this is structured. Like I see spelling mistakes and wrong wording at this very moment, but I can’t correct the text anymore because it’s dumbed down too much…)

In case you can’t open the pictures on the phone properly, I linked the letter here again.

Part 2

You made it through the main essay (Or you skipped it entirely. Who could blame you?). Likely - if you are living in Germany at least - you will have encountered similar absurdities as well. You might want to hear more annekdotes to really give in to the rage about the system. You might want to hear about the broader context. Or you might be interested in what could be, and is being, done.

If you also understand spoken German I want to refer you to two beautifully detailed podcast episodes from Philip Banse and Jurist Ulf Buermeyer in their podcast “Die Lage der Nation”:

Further I am likely to write about the rough state of norms and standards regarding the German state administrations IT sector someday, as there is currently a whitepaper being drafted at the German Institute for Standardization (DIN) on this very topic.
I will link this article ((here)) (as long as there are still double brackets around the “here” there is no such article yet)

If you are a German citizen, get informed about the digital ID-card here. I imagine that with increased registration the vicious cicle of low amounts of digitally presented administrational interactions and the correlating low use of the digital ID-card, can be broken.