The administration of public and individual registers by the German federal government, federal states and municipalities has so far been seriously inadequate. Now, after months of discussions, the coalition parties have reached an agreement on the modernisation of registers in order to finally make concrete progress in the digitisation of public administration. With the Register Modernisation Act and the federal and state-level project “Overall Control of Register Modernisation”, registers should soon function in a much more citizen- and business-friendly manner nationwide. The law was passed in April 2021 and is intended to ensure that public authorities can better exchange data with each other through the digitalisation and networking of registers. Among other things, the law also provides for the introduction of a central identifier for all citizens (based on the tax ID), under which the data of the respective citizens are to be brought together. Unless public registers are successfully modernised, the implementation of the once-only principle, and thus a user-friendly administration, is not possible. According to the once-only principle, citizens should not have to provide their data again for each administrative process, but only once, since the various public authorities can access it again and again.
In the view of the eco Association, the Register Modernisation Act lays an important foundation for the modernisation of public administration. However, the implementation should urgently be accelerated, so that the execution of the Online Access Act (OZG) is not delayed further and a digital, user-friendly and efficient public administration quickly becomes reality. The modernisation of the registers requires uniform standards and regular monitoring and must be closely interlinked with the implementation of the OZG in order to avoid further delays. Open questions about data protection should also be answered quickly, eco urges, in order to quickly dispel any final doubts about constitutionality and to strengthen trust in digital solutions.
The legislative package should have already passed through the interior and co-advisory committees on 21 June 2023, but was postponed to the next session week, as the CDU/CSU parliamentary group demanded another hearing. Afterwards, the resolution can go through the committees, which will then make a recommendation to the plenary.
