Change of era: Federal Council abolishes fax requirement

The Bundesrat is going digital. With the start of October, the state chamber will no longer require initiatives to be submitted by fax. This means that submissions from the federal states can now "finally" also be submitted electronically "with legal effect", announced the head of the Baden-Württemberg State Chancellery, Florian Stegmann (Greens), recently. The prerequisite is a "PDF file together with a Word or Word-compatible file", explained the lawyer. Despite the restriction, he spoke of an "epochal change in the Bundesrat", which Baden-Württemberg had driven forward. Digitization is therefore also on its way in the Bundesrat. However, the steps should – also be "gladly bigger" in the state – in the future.

Stegmann's announcement via social media received some approval there. Johannes Eckstein, who says he is committed to "human-centered software development" in terms of sustainable digital value creation, also praised the move away from fax machines as a step forward. "Nevertheless, we should not ignore the underlying details," the engineer points out. The requirement to at least be compatible with Microsoft Word ignores "the importance of open standards such as the OpenDocument Format (ODF)". Such open formats guarantee "future-proof interoperability and prevent dependencies on proprietary software".

With open standards in the future?

"Even though Microsoft Office now supports the ODF format, full compatibility with DOCX remains limited in many areas –, especially for more complex documents," explains Eckstein. "So why not rely on open, transparent formats from the outset, which guarantee flexibility and accessibility in the long term?" is his question. Other users want to know whether there will also be an e-mail address where PDF and Word documents can be sent. "I assume that the receiving end will provide a public key? Just like the sender side?" is another comment.

The use of fax technology is declining in public authorities throughout Germany, but it is still widely used in the judiciary in particular. Courts, public prosecutors' offices and prisons in particular still have devices. The police, fire department and rescue coordination centers must also be able to receive emergency calls from deaf people via fax. Bavaria's Minister of State for Digital Affairs, Fabian Mehring (Free Voters), emphasized at the beginning of the year that he had "had enough". He no longer wants to allow communication with data transmission technology, at least internally. The former Thuringian Data Protection Commissioner Lutz Hasse warned in February: "In principle, faxes should not be used." An email with an encrypted attachment or integrated end-to-end encryption via PGP or S/MIME is "always preferable", at least for the transmission of particularly sensitive data.

(olb)