Christina Lang, CEO & Founder of DigitalService, Germany

1. How do you use technology/policy to improve citizens’ lives? Tell us about your role or organisation.

Digital Service is the German federal administration's digitalization partner. Our interdisciplinary teams with experts from software development, product management and design & user research work closely together with our project partners in the administration. Jointly, we develop digitalization standards, design user-centered solutions for extensive digitalization projects and implement them in-house. Simultaneously, our Tech4Germany and Work4Germany fellowships bring external digital and transformation experts into ministries to demonstrate the advantages of new working methods and build up digital competencies.

All of this is urgently needed in Germany since our administration’s digitalization lags behind compared with other countries.

 Like everywhere else, Germans are used to smooth and user-friendly digital services in the private sector and groan when faced with their often cumbersome and not fully digital administrative equivalents. With an increasing shortage of skilled workers, employees in the administration are meanwhile also reaching their limits. But above all, it is a risk for democracy when people feel that the government does not support them sufficiently, and instead is making things more difficult for them.

So Digital Service has a crucial role as the partner who knows both the administration and how digitalization works - not just in theory, but in practice. It makes me very proud that, since I founded DigitalService’s predecessor organization in 2018, we have grown to over 200 highly skilled employees to live up to that role.

2. What was the most impactful project you worked on this year?

It may come as a surprise, but the project that immediately comes to my mind is not actually a digital product: It is the Digitalcheck, a digital-readiness check for new federal legislation which we develop jointly with the German Ministry of the Interior and Community.

Laws allowing digital implementation are a critical factor in streamlining procedures, saving costs and reducing bureaucracy, so the potential impact of Digitalcheck is huge. It provides legislative drafters with tools to help them develop practical and digitally implementable regulations.

We started working on the project in 2022, with compliance to Digitalcheck becoming compulsory in January 2023. Over 90% of new federal laws now use elements of Digitalcheck, but most do not yet make use of the full package. While we continue to develop content and structure, we therefore also focus on further promoting the widespread use of Digitalcheck. This requires major changes in legislative drafters’ work practices, but they pay off.

For instance, our team supported the draft electricity tax law: As a result, the draft enables a dramatically higher volume of applications for electricity tax to be handled automatically, thereby greatly easing the burden on staff to process applications. The law brings forward the online application requirement to 2025 and will reduce compliance costs by an estimated 15.4 million Euro per year.

3. What was one unexpected learning from 2024?
 

Sometimes things move a lot quicker than you had originally planned for! In November 2024, the German federal elections were moved forward from September to February 2025, with obvious implications for our project partners in federal ministries and the public administration.

Fortunately, it is in DigitalService’s DNA to be flexible and to continuously prioritize our planning to adapt to real-world conditions.

4. What are your priorities for 2025?

After the federal elections, the new government will no doubt redefine policies on digitalizing public services. DigitalService is in a unique position compared to other players in the digital ecosystem because we deliver on several levels: We contribute to key transformation projects like digital-ready legislation, we build and run actual digital products and services, and our fellowships help guide modern methods and ways of working in the administration.

I want to make sure that we can feed this broad experience into the decision on the future of digital governance and set-up of public sector digitalisation in Germany, and I would like to strengthen and broaden DigitalService’s role going forward.

5. What advice do you have for public sector innovators?

Our advice to public sector innovators is very clear and based on the belief that change can only come from real delivery:
 

• In today’s complex digital world, you cannot plan innovations long in advance and on the drawing board. Instead, start small and with a clear goal: What problem do you want to solve? Define your objectives precisely and ensure that everyone involved has a common understanding.
   
•  Involve your users as early as possible and incorporate their feedback in your services. This way you can measure if you are heading in the right direction and, when necessary, make adjustments along the way. The earlier the better - avoid investing time and effort in a solution that turns out to be ultimately ineffective.
   
• Talk about your learnings with the wider community at every possibility and on all channels you have at your disposal. This will broaden your impact, inspire others and enable them to build on your findings and methods. In our DigitalService blog, for instance, we constantly give detailed insights into our work.

6. Who inspires you today?

My highly motivated and skilled team at DigitalService inspire me every single day. Just as much as the many people we come across in public administration, both as our project partners and in a wider context, who work hard to improve public services. In both cases, this means being prepared for a marathon rather than a sprint and being ready to tackle many obstacles, predictable ones as well as problems that pop up unexpectedly along the way. It is a real achievement to keep up the momentum and motivation in such challenging circumstances, and I am very grateful to be surrounded by such wonderful and resilient colleagues and partners.

To read more of our past coverage of Germany's DigitalService, click here.