overview

The Act to Improve Online Access to Administrative Services (Online Access Act: OZG) obliges the federal and state governments to offer their administrative services electronically via administrative portals by the end of 2022 and to communicate in the nationwide portal network.

In order to develop nationwide online services as quickly as possible, the Federal Government has provided significant funding with the economic recovery plan in the years 2020 to 2022. Each federal department is responsible for the development of subject-specific online services with one or more federal states. The implementing federal states must develop one-for-all services (EfA services). This means that the various federal states, in the role of EfA implementation responsibility, are developing online services on a work-in-progress basis and making them available for shared use across all levels throughout Germany. Specifically, online services are first designed and technically implemented in a usage-centric manner. They are then centrally supervised and technically operated and made available to all federal states for shared use.

For the technical development as well as the future media-free provision and the central operation of the online services, EfA minimum requirements were mandatory.

Due to the large scope of the tasks, the implementation of the Online Access Act (OZG) is organised in a division of labour. For this purpose, the services were bundled in life and business situations and assigned to a topic area. In total, there are 14 topics. These are processed jointly by the federal government, the federal states and with the support of the municipalities. In doing so, a federal department, together with one or more federal states, takes the lead for one topic at a time.

The lead federal state is responsible for the complete processing of the services within the subject area. It takes over the overall coordination of the work of the implementation and performance managers. The person responsible for performance is responsible for the implementation of the content and thus plays a central role in the EfA implementation. This is to ensure that the specialist side is involved in the implementation.

If implemented in accordance with the EfA principle, funds from the economic stimulus package are available for the implementing federal state. Requirements for the receipt of the funds are a signed umbrella agreement and a specific agreement, which is concluded between the federal government and the respective federal state. Both documents must be available in order to have the project applications for the respective CSO services approved by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Homeland (BMI).

The state of North Rhine-Westphalia is responsible for the provision of EfA services in ten EfA implementation projects (EfA-UP). This task is cross-thematic as well as cross-disciplinary. Two EfA projects will be implemented together with Bremen. The following CSO services for the economy lie in the implementation responsibility of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection and Energy (MWIKE):

1. Start of business (OZG IDs 10289 and 10294)
2. Activity notification and authorisation (OZG ID 10293)
3. Appointment and recognition of experts (OZG ID 10282)
4. Continuation of operations permit (OZG ID 10352)
5. Tax deregistration (OZG-ID 10356)
6. Cross-border services (OZG ID 10378)
7. Admission for regulated professions (OZG-ID 10069)
8. Genetic engineering plants (OZG-ID 10749)
9. Individual approval of vehicles and vehicle parts (OZG-ID 10763)
10. Animal transport (OZG-ID 10454)

For this purpose, [individual agreements] (https://www.onlinezugangsgesetz.de/Webs/OZG/DE/Umsetzung/konjunkturprogramm/kooperation/kooperation-node.html) were concluded and the project applications were fully approved by the BMI. This results in the overall scope of the online services to be implemented.

This is based on the individual agreements on the so-called [‘umbrella agreement’] (https://www.onlinezugangsgesetz.de/SharedDocs/kurzmeldung/Webs/OZG/DE/2021/02_dachvertrag.html). Among other things, they lay down rules for the financing and cooperation of the federal and state governments. The common goal is the nationwide digitalization of administrative services. For example, the state of Hesse is the leader in the field of taxation and customs. Hessen has concluded four such individual agreements for various administrative services to be digitised with the leading federal department, the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF).

The Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia has also signed a specific agreement with the Federal Ministry of Finance. MWIKE implements EfA implementation projects in 14 subject areas.

The minimum EfA requirements define a technical, legal and organisational framework. These must be fulfilled by online services in order to be reusable or co-usable. The EfA minimum requirements have been decided by the IT Planning Council's group of department heads and will be adapted or further developed if necessary. They are divided into must, target and can requirements.

The minimum EfA requirements shall include the following criteria:

• Surface design and design
• Technical logic
• User account
• Payment
• Data exchange standard
• Routing and transport
• Legal possibility of re-use
• organisation