Abstract

Incentives to Increase the Usage of E-Government Solutions

Since approximately twenty years german authorities have been trying to accelerate the usage of e-government solutions by citizens and enterprises, especially the so-called transactional services. Not only to provide smarter access to administrative proceedings in the interest of citizens and companies, but increasingly also to reorganize internal workflows based on the options offered by modern information and communication technology (ICT), to reduce redundancy and to increase effectiveness. In many cases, these offers were not adopted in the way the administration expected and in the way it is necessary to ensure a profitable business operation. Therefore, it is time to find instruments and incentives which are likely suitable to increase the usage of e-government solutions. The article exemplarily describes some of these incentives and attempts to afford a benchmark, if and how far the german administration has the ability to use these incentives considering applicable law. Proper solutions seem to be a fee reduction for electronic proceedings and a sustainable and significant acceleration of the administrative proceedings, if it is realized fully electronic. Based on the voluntariness of using electronic communication (german authorities are only allowed to use e-mail, if citizens have opened this way of communication explicitly, cf. § 3a Administrative Procedures Act [VwVfG]) those incentives must be chosen prior, which are aimed to increase the number of citizens, who dedicate their e-mail address also for administrative proceedings. Regarding the regulatory framework – especially the principle of equality – there are no insuperable barriers anymore to adopt these instruments by the german administration. The article concludes with the recommendation to go forward with these instruments in the interest of a “good administration“.