In various publications and at events, there are increasing statements that local authorities should develop IT applications for official requirements themselves. In a recent discussion on digitalization in the healthcare sector, for example, the view was expressed that local authorities should apply for funding and then take on and design the project planning, development, roll-out and support of IT applications. Can this be the solution for the digital transformation of individual government departments? A brief look at the municipal situation:

IT orientation of a municipal administration

The municipal budget consolidations of recent years have placed a heavy burden on municipal IT. Future financial and personnel savings targets will have an impact on local authorities with their own IT, but also on local authority IT association service providers. It was and is only possible to pursue the digital transformation and implement the legal requirements, such as the OZG, by shifting tasks to municipal/public IT service providers or providers of municipal software and commercial providers.

State capitals and municipalities with a population of 500,000 or more are able to implement developments, adaptations or IT applications on a small scale, depending on their resources. Apart from these exceptions, a local authority with its own IT is not equipped in terms of personnel and finances to develop new IT applications in a similar way to a start-up or to take over software developments. There are simply no development teams that can dedicate themselves exclusively to a single product development with their own project and product management.

Co-financing through subsidies and up-front costs

State and federal subsidies cannot be used as start-up financing for own personnel, as these are generally not recognized as eligible for own personnel financing. In practice, this situation means that you either have to provide your own pre-financing with staffing shares in the staffing plan or you have to commission external staff completely. Even if start-up funding could help, further development after the end of the funding phase would place an additional burden on the municipal budget and would then have to be budgeted for, which cannot be mapped due to the savings requirements in the municipalities. The sticking point is that municipalities are not allowed to engage in commercial activities under the municipal code of the federal states, which virtually rules out the refinancing of such expenditure. As has been shown in many SmartCity funding projects, the only alternative here is to award contracts externally, often with the need for interim and advance financing via the municipal budget.

Local in-house developments

Can and should individual municipalities or municipal associations develop scalable and reusable IT applications for other municipalities? Of course, joint developments on an open source basis are an option. Unfortunately, little consideration is given to long-term software maintenance and the necessary third-party support services for a large number of subsequent users.

For years, official IT standards such as XÖV have been cited as the solution, although the question arises as to who actually defines the IT standards for new application areas and how binding these standards are in terms of implementation. Hands-on IT interfaces could be quickly defined and local implementation successes achieved with in-house developments on greenfield sites. From practice for practice, this would initially only be a local approach. There are also good examples of apps and individual web applications, but does this also apply to official IT applications? In the big OZG picture, there are a large number of players that need to be involved in a standard definition. However, the development of IT standards takes a very long time to implement and is unlikely to be realized by the end of the respective funding phases

Point of view

Exchanging data on an inter-municipal and cross-federal level, implementing linked open data, implementing service APIs and enabling service portal integration with inbox functions, implementing technical and legal requirements in an IT application and keeping the legal requirements in an IT application sustainable and up-to-date in the long term, permanently implementing minimum operational IT security standards, integrating third-party services such as authentication procedures, operating OSS community work, etc. are aspects that require further expertise and nationally coordinated and binding specifications on individual topics.

The development of IT applications for use by public authorities is not a municipal task. The digitalization of core public authority services and the digital implementation of laws for compliance with directives is a national task and must be orchestrated across the federal government.

A time-limited funding pot or the awarding of a lighthouse project for municipalities is not sustainable and cannot be the solution for the digitalization of individual municipal authority areas. The OZG experience in particular has impressively shown that IT application development by an individual municipality itself is not a sensible option.

Link to the overview of OZG implementation structures:  https://www.oeffentliche-it.de/-/monitor-digitale-verwaltung-4 (opens in a new tab)