Since the horizontal exchange of data between government agencies is prohibited, it
severely reduces the economies of scale benefits from e-solutions. The one-stop shop
approach severely violates the principle that each government agency should remain an
island that keeps personal data locked.
Yet, while most respondents mentioned Germany’s privacy rules, there was less
consensus about whether the barrier was real or in the minds of bureaucrats. Several
administrators in a medium-size city stated that Germany’s privacy laws were a real and
serious constraint on their ability to adopt e-government reforms. One city administrator
referenced the United States stating, “We have to be far more careful about storing
information about citizens than you do in the United States.” At the same time, an
administrator in a large city with a strong computer background said that new federal
laws and the development of electronic signature cards have eliminated many of the
barriers to adopting e-government reforms. He suggested that among administers of an
older generation or administers who were not computer savvy, there remained a strong
instinct to assume that many e-government proposals were not possible because of the
privacy rules. He said, “Very little can’t be done under the current Datenschutzgesetz
(privacy laws). If a city tells you they can’t do e-government because of the datenschutz,
they’re lying. It’s largely in their minds.”
Whether Germany’s privacy laws are a real constraint or not is beyond the scope
of this research. What I found, however, was that there was a consensus among
respondents that public sector elites at the local level perceive that the privacy laws
prevent them from adopting a number of e-government reforms either because the
reforms are illegal or because the solutions are too costly at the present time.
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E-government in Germany 29
Convention