According to the Online Access Act, local authorities are obliged to offer their citizens and businesses certain services online in a service portal by 31.12.2022.

The three-person OZG team is responsible for all aspects of implementation, including programme planning, an overview of individual services (so-called "as-is" recording), prioritization of services, provision of the service portal, administration, training and communication, both internally and externally.

20 services have already been implemented, including the registration for dog tax, vehicle registrations and decommissioning (i-KFZ) and the application for a fine dust sticker. Plans for 2022 include instruction in accordance with the Infection Protection Act (with online training videos and a test function in the portal) and digital marriage registration.

In the meantime, the number of services to be completed has been reduced. This is due to the fact that during the prioritization query, offices have set individual services to "not city administration".

Nevertheless, it is to be expected that the OZG cannot be implemented on time by 31.12.2022.

Consideration of the maturity levels

It has become clear that it is not sufficient to measure the success of the OZG implementation solely on the basis of the project status.

In order to illustrate the success of the Bonn OZG implementation more precisely, another key figure will be used with immediate effect. The basis for this is the federal government's maturity model. The maturity model is used to illustrate the degree of digitalization of a service.

This maturity model is constantly being scrutinized and further developed by the BMI, which is responsible for the implementation of the OZG at federal level. This is why there are different versions of the maturity model. The maturity model is divided into five maturity levels, whereby the underlying obligations have changed over the years:

If you compare the two maturity models with each other, a few aspects stand out:

Old maturity model
New maturity model
Level 1 provides for the storage of service descriptions for all OZG services.

In level 2, application documents that cannot be submitted online (e.g. PDFs) are to be offered.
In the new maturity model, levels 1 and 2 have been merged to form a new maturity level 1.
Level 3 provides for an online application with an electronic submission function.
Level 3 provides for an electronic submission function and the transmission of the digital decision to citizens.
Level 4 provides for complete online processing, including the once-only principle (although not specifically designed) and an electronic feedback channel.
Stage 4 provides for complete online processing, the once-only principle is to be implemented via register queries.
The problem is that Bonn's infrastructure (which is also the infrastructure of many other municipalities in NRW) is not represented at all in the new maturity model.

Bonn is between levels 2 and 3 in the new maturity model - the service portal offers online forms with an upload function for the necessary evidence. Level 2 provides for an online form without upload, while level 3 provides for digital delivery of the notification.

The maturity levels for the Bonn services were recorded manually by the OZG team as part of the actual recording, i.e. at the end of 2019 and in the course of 2020.

Adapting the current data to the new maturity model would require a great deal of (re)maintenance and a complete reorientation.

For this reason, the OZG team is currently working according to the old maturity model. In the "Portal integrations" section, the named services are already available as online forms on www.bonn.de, so that only the processes need to be considered and the forms integrated into the portal. The advantage for citizens and employees is that, in addition to the online submission function, these services now also allow communication via the inbox and, if necessary, payment via e-payment, for example. Even if the notifications are not yet sent digitally via the inbox, the inbox at least opens up the channel so that notifications can be sent digitally in a timely manner once the electronic seal is enabled. Unfortunately, this point does not appear in the maturity model.

It is planned to upgrade the services that are at maturity level 0 to at least maturity level 1 as soon as possible.

Criticism of the maturity model

As can be the case with many KPIs, the maturity model generally lags behind in several aspects:

The once-only principle named in level 4 cannot be implemented by the municipalities without support from the federal government: a central data platform would be required (e.g. like the X-Road in Estonia), via which the different registers could be linked and the data could be transported securely and encrypted. Here, the municipalities can only wait for the implementation of the Register Modernization Act.

With all maturity models, it should be noted that there are services that can never reach maturity level 4.

One example of this is the "property market report" service. The OZG would like this property market report to be made available online for citizens. However, since this does not have to be applied for, but a document on bonn.de is completely sufficient, it is questionable how maturity level 4 is to be achieved here. These are currently offered for download as a PDF on bonn.de. However, this OZG service is now only to be equated with maturity level 2, as these are PDF documents. Unfortunately, the OZG is not very specific at this point. These points remain open in both the old and the new maturity model.

It is also unclear when maturity level 4 is reached for classic fault reports, such as the service "Contamination of road drainage facilities" (i.e. a blocked gully).

Nevertheless, the maturity model is the only standardized system for measuring the degree of digitalization with other municipalities, but the results must be compared with caution in an inter-municipal comparison as described above.