Digitization of the administration: Revolution in the IT Planning Council failed

By German standards, it would have been a revolution in terms of digitization: The federal states of Bremen and Saxony-Anhalt wanted to hand over power over the so-called "National Once Only Technical System" (NOOTS) to the federal government in return for the latter bearing the costs alone. The two states argued that central control and funding would accelerate digitalization in Germany.

However, they were unable to get their way with this core demand because the majority of the federal states wanted to retain their influence over the NOOTS: The IT Planning Council of the federal and state governments decided on Wednesday to stick with the classic, more complex model. This means that the federal and state governments will jointly finance and control the NOOTS.

The NOOTS is the technical heart of register modernization. Federal, state and local authorities will use the system to exchange information about citizens and companies with each other if they allow it. Applicants would then no longer have to provide documents such as birth certificates or registration certificates, which should massively reduce bureaucracy.

The decisions on the control, financing and use of the NOOTS were hotly disputed within the committee. Discussions had continued into the night the evening before, explained Federal CIO Markus Richter at a press conference after the meeting. In the vote on the final resolution, several federal states abstained, not just Bremen and Saxony-Anhalt, the two initiators of the counter-proposal.

States want to pay less

The draft that has now been adopted still contains several open points that are to be finally clarified by the Conference of Minister Presidents (MPK) in December. For example, the federal states are now demanding that the federal government cover a large part of the costs for the NOOTS. On this point, Federal CIO Richter referred to the fact that the federal government is finding it difficult to make funding commitments in view of the upcoming provisional budget. However, funding for the NOOTS has already been secured for 2025 and 2026, Richter emphasized. The federal and state digitization authority Fitko is providing funds of 70 million euros for this purpose.

It has also not yet been finally decided how many federal states will be allowed to decide on the NOOTS in a planned steering group. The current draft proposes a group of six federal states (plus the federal government). However, some states, including Bremen, want to reduce the size of this group in order to speed up the decision-making process.

The current draft is not sufficient to implement the NOOTS quickly enough, Martin Hagen, State Councillor at the Senator for Finance and Bremen's representative on the IT Planning Council, told c't. "However, there is still an opportunity to go a decisive step further and simplify governance. The MPK must now decide this."

Bremen and Saxony-Anhalt had also previously called for all authorities in Germany to join the NOOTS. They wanted to ensure that the tax offices, for example, would also make their data available. They achieved partial success on this point: according to the new draft, not only the 51 registers already named in the Register Modernization Act are to communicate via the NOOTS. All authorities are now to join as soon as the technical and legal requirements are met. However, there is no deadline for the connection. Politicians can therefore avoid connecting to the NOOTS by not creating the prerequisites.

The IT Planning Council passed numerous other resolutions on Wednesday, which will be published in the coming days. Among other things, the federal and state governments adopted a joint IT strategy for the first time. This umbrella strategy is "the biggest step in recent years", said Federal CIO Richter at the press conference. It is a "clear signal" to the administration's IT service providers that they want to strengthen competition and "break up islands". Principles such as once-only have also been laid down.

D.digital, c't's briefing on digitalization, will also report on the resolutions of the IT Planning Council on Tuesday. You can subscribe to the fortnightly newsletter free of charge here.

(cwo)