Accenture's fifth annual global e-government study

Germany
2004: 14
2003 Rank: 10
2002 Rank: 9
Vision introduced: 1999
Vision title: BundOnline 2005
Vision summary:
To ensure that citizens and enterprises are able to
use the services of the federal administration
more simply, faster and cheaper.
Regular Internet users (percent of population):
39.40 percent
Regular Internet users who have ever visited an
eGovernment site: 47 percent
Germany
The government of Germany made little measurable
progress on its eGovernment vision this year, which
caused the country to slip four places in the rankings.
As with a number of other countries in this
large cluster of 50 percent to 60 percent overall
maturity, Germany lost ground to countries that
had eGovernment performances only slightly better
than its own. Despite the fact that a few German
eGovernment services improved to a transact level,
the country’s overall maturity score improved by less
than 2 percent. The only area Germany showed real
improvement was in customer relationship management,
where its performance improved by close to
17 percent. Even with that improvement, however,
the country remains in the bottom half of the
customer relationship management rankings.
As happened last year when it slipped one place
in the rankings, Germany’s modest advances have
allowed it to be overtaken by faster-moving countries,
such as France, the Netherlands and Japan.
In July 2003, the management of the German
eGovernment initiative, BundOnline 2005, was
transferred out of the Ministry of Inner Affairs and
is now centralized in the Bundesverwaltungsamt
(Federal Office for Administration). This may indicate
that the eGovernment program has lost its top rank
on the political agenda.
In past years the national BundOnline 2005 vision
focused on making federal government services
available online, despite the fact that in Germany
the most significant services for citizens and businesses
are provided primarily by state and, especially,
municipal governments. In consequence, BundOnline
2005 has now been augmented with a “Deutschland-
Online” vision (www.deutschland-online.de), which
seeks to integrate portals, provide infrastructure and
set standards across all levels of government. Based
on the principle “Einige für alle” (some for all),
transferable best-of-breed solutions for the most
significant services shall be developed by leading
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