Toward Electronic Government in the German Federal Political System

Abstract

The German approach toward Electronic Government is not very well known abroad since it materialises not so much at the Federal but at the state and local levels where public administration is concentrated. It is characterised by a strong legacy of four decades of relatively successful IT use in public administration, as well as by a tradition of intergovernmental coordination. New developments in the sense of Electronic Service Delivery take place at the local level while the federal administration is busy with creating a high-speed link between offices in Bonn and Berlin, enabling advanced forms of telecooperation among ministries. At an experimental stage, there are some innovative projects creating multifunctional service shops at the countryside which have a potential of easing access to public and commercial services while-in contrast to Internet-based access-preserving a human service interface. Also, first experiments with IT support of citizen participation in urban planning processes are taking place