Bundestag to vote today on NOOTS state treaty for register modernisation

The Bundestag will vote on the NOOTS state treaty this evening. With the ‘National Once-Only Technical System’, the federal and state governments want to create a common digital infrastructure for data exchange between offices and authorities. Bitkom President Dr Ralf Wintergerst comments:

“Today, the Bundestag can give a real boost to the digitisation of public administration in Germany. With the NOOTS state treaty, proactive, citizen-oriented administration with a genuine once-only principle is within reach. If public authorities and agencies at the federal level and in the 16 federal states can exchange data with each other in future, citizens, businesses and the administration itself will benefit. Linked digital registers enable applications to be processed quickly and without media discontinuity, reduce processing errors, save costs and prevent data from having to be re-entered repeatedly. In a recent Bitkom survey, 71 per cent of citizens aged 18 and over said they were in favour of authorities exchanging more data with each other so that they would not have to provide the same information over and over again. And 82 per cent want authorities to automatically contact them when they are entitled to a service or remind them when, for example, their ID card is about to expire.

The state treaty, which must also be approved by the parliaments of the individual federal states, initially creates the legal basis for reducing bureaucracy. It is at least as important that the federal and state governments also work together in practice and quickly build the necessary technical infrastructure together.”