NRW reports on the progress of the roll-out of electronic files

Christoph Dammermann, State Secretary at the Ministry for Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalisation and Energy (MWIDE) in North Rhine-Westphalia, and Prof. Dr Andreas Meyer-Falcke, CIO of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, met a few days ago with the management of the Dortmund-based IT consultancy Materna Information & Communications SE to discuss the progress of the e-file roll-out in North Rhine-Westphalia and exchange views on digitalisation in the state. All those involved gave a positive interim assessment of the ongoing e-file digitisation project in North Rhine-Westphalia. “NRW is one of the pioneers in the introduction of the e-file. By the end of 2024 at the latest, all administrative staff in NRW will be working with the e-file as their primary system,” says Martin Wibbe, CEO of the Materna Group.

In collaboration with IT.NRW, the central IT service provider for the state administration of North Rhine-Westphalia, Materna – together with its partners Ceyoniq, DXC and Infora – is equipping a total of 60,000 workstations across 225 public authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia with the electronic administrative file system as part of a state-wide project. Materna had been commissioned to provide an e-file system for all state authorities in NRW and to support its roll-out. During their visit to Materna on 10 September 2020, Christoph Dammermann and Prof. Dr Andreas Meyer-Falcke expressed their great satisfaction with the progress of the e-file project in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The large-scale roll-out across North Rhine-Westphalia’s state authorities began at the start of this year. This also involves migrating existing legacy systems to the new solution. Around 200 authorities are being fully re-equipped and are thus implementing electronic files for the first time. The NRW E-Government Act (EGovG) stipulates that all authorities in NRW will be working with the electronic file as their primary system by 2024 at the latest. “The introduction of the electronic file is one of the most comprehensive modernisation projects in the public administration of North Rhine-Westphalia and lays the foundations for the further digitalisation of services,” emphasised State Secretary Dammermann.

In addition, the implementation of the Online Access Act (OZG) in North Rhine-Westphalia was discussed during the meeting at Materna. “We discussed the challenges of ensuring timely and legally compliant implementation. The use of core components and standardised digitisation processes can speed up implementation,” says Michael Hagedorn, Head of the Public Sector Division at Materna. Materna is supporting various public authorities in implementing the OZG and is, for example, introducing digital form solutions.

All those involved agreed on the priorities for the OZG: “We must be able to demonstrate tangible results from our groundwork on digitalisation very soon. And these must be results that offer added value to the public sector’s customers – the citizens of our state,” said CIO Andreas Meyer-Falcke, who also emphasised the importance of local authorities.