Germany Action Plan Review 2021-2023

This product consists of an IRM review of Germany’s 2021-2023 action planAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen.... The action plan is made up of 14 commitments. This review emphasises its analysis on the strength of the action plan to contribute to implementation and results. For the commitment-by-commitment data see Annex 1. For details regarding the methodology and indicators used by the IRM for this Action Plan Review, see Section III, Methodology and IRM Indicators.

All interviewees agreed that information received would not be attributed to individuals, to create a more open environment for conversation. Several participants opted for higher levels of confidentiality and are thus only listed with general reference to their organisation or type of organisation. For the same reasons, interviews were not recorded but captured through extensive notetaking.

Overview of the 2021-2023 Action Plan

Germany’s third action plan continues the goals of previous plans to increase open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici..., digitise public administration, consult citizens in specific policy areas, and improve open government at the subnational level. The most promising commitmentThrough the Action Plan Review, OGP’s Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) recognizes promising commitments that address a policy area that is important to stakeholders or the national context. Pro... could lead to improvements in competitiveness and transparencyAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, transparency occurs when “government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the pub... More of public procurementTransparency in the procurement process can help combat corruption and waste that plagues a significant portion of public procurement budgets globally. Technical specifications: Commitments that aim t... More. Commitments which make new data and tools available should encourage wide public uptake. When developing future action plans, the Federal Chancellery could organise thematically-focused consultations to more effectively involve civil society.

Germany’s third action plan has 14 commitments, including five which involve Länder (state) governments.[1] Only one commitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action... to expand conferences and forums on improving open data in Germany, is a direct continuation from the previous action plan.

Shortly after the adoption of the third action plan, Germany held elections and parties negotiated a new coalition government in autumn 2021. Several commitments in the action plan happen to connect well with the stated priorities of the incoming coalition government which also continues long-term goals of the Federal Chancellery to digitise Germany’s public administration and make it more user-friendly.[2][3] Germany could consider amending digitisation commitments to be more ambitious during the implementation period. The action plan also seeks to improve civic participation in educationAccountability within the public education system is key to improving outcomes and attainment, and accountability is nearly impossible without transparent policies and opportunities for participation ... policy, trace substances, and biodiversity monitoring, which could be implemented in ways that touch on the incoming coalition’s priorities around diversity and inclusionOGP participating governments are working to create governments that truly serve all people. Commitments in this area may address persons with disabilities, women and girls, lesbian, gay, bisexual, tr... More. Finally, Germany could consider adding new commitments in areas that align with the incoming coalition’s priorities around climate change and sustainable development, by linking open government to the country’s green transition.

Generally, the level of ambition of federal commitments is comparable to previous plans, as most represent incremental improvements to existing practices and their potential for changes is modest. For example, the commitments often involve centralising existing information,[4] making specific information available in open format,[5] or conducting standalone public consultations.[6] For some commitments, it is difficult to assess the potential for results as ambitious, as they are open ended and are not yet fully planned out.[7]

The third plan includes three commitments from two German states (Länder), Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), addressing civic participation and publishing open data on public services and elections. The federal government and Länder will jointly implement two commitments, developing an open-source platform for public administration (with Baden-Württemberg and NRW), and setting up a central notification service for public contract award procedures (with Bremen). The ongoing involvement of Länder in Germany’s action plans is a positive development, as important open government initiatives have previously occurred at this level.[8]

During implementation, it will be important for public institutions to encourage wide public uptake of the information and tools made available. This may require ongoing consultations during implementation and targeted awareness raising for new platforms on legislative information (6.1) and planning and approval procedures for major federal transport projects (6.3). Commitment 6.3 could also benefit from publishing tenders and available participation opportunities, and since the platform is scheduled to be completed after the action plan period, this commitment could be continued to the next plan. The government and civil society stakeholders identified Commitment 7.2, to develop a central platform for public contract awards, as among the most important in the action plan. To maximise the results of this commitment, the IRM recommends encouraging wide uptake of the new platform by Länder governments, as the participation of the awarding bodies at the Länder level is not legally binding for contracts below the relevant EU thresholds. The IRM also recommends consulting expert stakeholders when determining procurement data fields and widening the scope of procurement data beyond the announcements for tenders.

To develop the third action plan, ministries jointly drafted a non-binding outline as a basis, and civil society then submitted comments and additional proposals mainly, though not exclusively, through the Open Government Network (OGN).[9] In the second stage, the Federal Chancellery prepared a draft action plan that incorporated some ideas from civil society in amended form,[10] while also taking up proposals from past consultations.[11] However, the Federal Chancellery noted that several ideas originating from civil society were not taken up in part because they did not identify an explicit problem, a possible solution, or a responsible public body.[12] According to the Federal Chancellery, moving to a purely online format (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) may have affected the quality of the proposals submitted. Furthermore, the Federal Chancellery noted that the electionsImproving transparency in elections and maintaining the independence of electoral commissions is vital for promoting trust in the electoral system, preventing electoral fraud, and upholding the democr... More in 2021 may have limited the ambitionAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, OGP commitments should “stretch government practice beyond its current baseline with respect to key areas of open government.” Ambition captures the po... of the action plan, due to the uncertainties around what activities the incoming federal and Länder governments would support.

To increase the quality of engagement in future co-creation processes, the IRM reiterates a previous recommendation to consider transitioning from an all-encompassing open government consultation to thematically focused consultations where specialised civil society stakeholders and relevant ministries jointly develop commitments based on shared interests.[13] Thematically-focused consultations could ensure co-ownership of action plans and help standardise collaboration between civil society and ministries, in lieu of a formal multi-stakeholder forum.[14] Commitment 6.6 aims to bring together experts from civil society and government to regularly discuss how to improve open data in Germany. This format could serve as an example of holding targeted consultations around other thematic areas.

Promising Commitments in Germany’s 2021-2023 Action Plan

The following review looks at the commitment that the IRM identified as having the potential to realise the most promising results. This review will inform the IRM’s research approach to assess implementation in the Results Report. The IRM Results Report will build on the early identification of potential results from this review to contrast with the outcomes at the end of the implementation period of the action plan. This review also provides an analysis of challenges, opportunities and recommendations to contribute to the learning and implementation process of this action plan.

The IRM has assessed Commitment 7.2 in detail below,[15] as it could lead to improvements in the competitiveness and transparency of public procurement in Germany. Under this commitment, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community (BMI) and the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen would provide German companies and citizens with information on available public tenders in a central platform and in a standard open format. The Federal Chancellery and the OGN consider this commitment to be among the most promising in the action plan. Its success, however, will largely depend on the level of uptake of the platform by Länder and municipalities and on the number of below-threshold tenders that are published.

The rest of the commitments in Germany’s third action plan have not been assessed in further detail. Commitments 6.1 and 6.4, for example, aim to centralise information that is mostly available already (with limited expansion), even though the Federal Chancellery noted they are particularly relevant to the federal government’s digitisation reforms. The legislative information portal (Commitment 6.1) could improve the searchability of legislative information which would be made available as open data for the first time. However, improvements to transparency will depend on the volume of new information made available, and the IRM recommends making amendments easily understandable, alongside the full text of enacted laws and regulations.[16] In future action plans, Germany could consider committing to providing comprehensive “legislative footprint” information for citizens to more easily track the development of any legislationCreating and passing legislation is one of the most effective ways of ensuring open government reforms have long-lasting effects on government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or r... from start to finish, including all amendments and their sponsors. Under Commitment 6.4, BMI will publish consolidated annual Integrity Reports on areas of federal administration, where possible as structured and machine-readable open data, and include aspects of the Federal Audit Office’s Internal Audit. According to BMI, the Integrity Reports will help support cross-departmental exchanges on best practices for anti-corruption within the federal administration. The IRM recommends actively consulting civil society experts on the specific information included in the Integrity Reports and to consider offering timely and continuous publication cycles in addition to the once-a-year publication, for example as soon as new audit data is available.

Completion of commitments 6.2 and 6.3 is planned in 2024, stretching beyond the end of the action plan period. The Federal Chancellery also noted that these are relevant to the federal government’s digitisation reforms. For Commitment 6.2, BMI will provide largely free online access to the federal government’s Joint Ministerial Gazette, but not until late 2024. For Commitment 6.3, the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) will set up a public platform with the planning and approval procedures of major federal transport and infrastructure projects (scheduled for Q4 2024).[17] BMVI believes that showing the obstacles in planning and approval processes in a transparent and systematic way can contribute to factual discussions about changes to these processes. It could also lead to better understanding of the projects for people who are directly and indirectly affected by them. It will be important for BMVI to encourage wide uptake of the platform by its specialist departments and subordinate authorities, as the action plan notes that in the absence of any legal obligation, providing information either on the platform or via a direct link to other websites is voluntary. According to the BMVI, the provision of data will be time-consuming, as there is no database at the federal level that already contains the necessary information in full. Given the potential significance of this commitment, the IRM recommends continuing it forward to the next action plan. Ideally, information on the formal planning and approval procedures should be made available in a timely manner, and where possible, in open and reusable format. BMVI could also consider expanding the platform to include information on the procurement phase of the project cycles (including tenders) or information on possible opportunities for public participationGiving citizens opportunities to provide input into government decision-making leads to more effective governance, improved public service delivery, and more equitable outcomes. Technical specificatio... in the planning process. Lastly, the IRM recommends BMVI to proactively promote the platform among citizens and civil society, and local media.

Commitment 6.5 involves developing a government data information platform, known by its German acronym “VIP”, to catalogue and assess the open data suitability of the data held by government institutions. During implementation, it will be important to clearly allocate responsibilities between the Federal Statistics Office, data-holding institutions, and partner organisations when developing the catalogue and carrying out the assessment. Commitment 6.6 will involve annual open data conferences and expert forums on improving the provision of open government data. This commitment will continue the open data conferences from Germany’s second action plan, and expand them to include more federal, Länder and non-government representatives. As mentioned, the format of these discussions could be an example for co-creating future OGP commitments around other thematic areas.

Three commitments involve consulting citizens around specific policy areas. Commitment 6.7 entails holding public consultations when developing Germany’s next National Action Plan on Education for Sustainable Development. Commitment 6.8 will continue the Dialogue on Trace Substances at the Federal Environment Agency’s Centre for Trace Substances. Participants will jointly select the relevant substances to be discussed and the commitment will result in a report on progress achieved. Commitment 6.9 involves harnessing citizen projects related to biodiversity monitoring by holding two “Application and Research in Dialogues” at the Centre for Biodiversity Monitoring. The IRM has not assessed these commitments in detail as they are designed to be open ended in order not to predetermine their outcomes. Their success will largely depend on whether the consultations go beyond existing practices on participatory policy making to offer more innovative solutions for sustainable development, as well as the extent to which these consultations will impact Germany’s policies in the relevant areas. In the future, Germany could consider formalising participatory mechanisms in policy-making processes. As an example, Estonia has used several OGP action plans to create a single access point for citizens and policymakers to the full cycle of policy development and an easy-to-use interface, aiming to engage experts and users from the outset.[18]

For Commitment 7.1, BMI and the Länder Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) will create an open source platform for public administration so that federal, Länder and local governments can share and reuse open source solutions. According to the action plan however, the platform will also be open to actors outside of the government, following a legal review. Germany could make this platform public and draw lessons from the Netherlands’ fourth action plan (2020-2022), which involves consulting the country’s open source experts to develop a toolbox, share best practices and link open source to policy making at the national level.[19]

Finally, the action plan includes three commitments from Länder. For Commitment 8.1, the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg will develop digital solutions to support civic participation in spatial planning and approvals. For Commitment 8.2, NRW will create the technical and legal framework for companies and public service providers to publish their services as open data on the portal Open.NRW. This commitment also entails standardising and centralising the publication of data on local elections in NRW. Currently, election data in NRW is provided in many places by many actors and in different formats, which makes re-use of elections data difficult. This commitment would provide a uniform structure of elections data as CSV files as well as a web API for data retrieval. Lastly, under Commitment 8.3, NRW will launch a Länder-wide participation portal in collaboration with the Free State of Saxony, which created a similar portal during the second action plan. NRW’s Ministry of Economy, Innovation, Digitalisation and EnergyEnsuring universal access to sustainable, dependable, and affordable energy is critical to every aspect of prosperity. Increasing public oversight and transparency in the energy sector can help to ens... More will also consult expert groups when developing guidelines for good participation and for feedback on the usability of the portal.

Table 1. Promising commitments

[1] Open Government Germany, Third National Action Plan 2021-2023, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Germany_Action-Plan_2021-2023_EN.pdf

[2] Commitments include, among others, developing a legislative information portal (6.1) and creating a platform for the planning and approval procedures of major transport projects (6.3).

[3] Spiegel, Panorama, https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bildung/bildungsforscher-marcel-helbig-ueber-laengere-weihnachtsferien-das-ganz-grosse-drama-ist-schon-gelaufen-a-1cced9e2-cc80-49a5-8c65-d6db630db6fb

[4] i.e. Commitment 6.1 on improving access to legal information and 8.2 on improving the quality and quantity of data from public service entities, and of election data.

[5] i.e. Commitment 6.4 on providing the Federal Government’s Integrity Report as open data and extend reporting to include aspects of Internal Audit work

[6] i.e. Commitment 6.7 on participatory development of the next National Action Plan on Education for Sustainable Development

[7] i.e. Commitment 6.6 on promoting knowledge-sharing in the open data environment, as well as commitments on public consultations (6.7, 6.8, and 6.9).

[8] For example, the second action plan (2019-2021) included commitments on strengthening data sovereignty in North Rhine Westphalia (Commitment 12) and establishing a participation portal of the Free State of Saxony (Commitment 13).

[9] The Länder commitments were developed in a separate process. In NRW, the ongoing development of the Digitalstrategie.NRW digital strategy was used to generate ideas. The Open.NRW office generated commitments from these proposals and NRW’s Open Government Working Group then agreed to them. See p 25, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Germany_Action-Plan_2021-2023_EN.pdf

[10] Adhocracy, https://adhocracy.plus/ogpde/ideas/2021-04264/

[11]https://ogpde.yrpri.org/community/940https://adhocracy.plus/ogpde/projects/ogp-konsultation/?initialSlide=0. From 5 to 24 May 2021, civil society had the opportunity to respond to the draft plan, https://adhocracy.plus/ogpde/projects/ogp-konsultation/?initialSlide=0.

[12] The Federal Chancellery and the OGN argued that more support to develop contributions would be helpful to improve their quality in the future.

[13] Open Government Partnership, IRM Germany Design Report, 2019-2021, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Germany_Design_Report_2019-2021_EN.pdf

[14] Stakeholders saw the Federal-State Exchange (Bund-Länder Austausch) as a potential means to implement OGP principles in the activities of ministries, though questions remain over the rights and responsibilities of this exchange. A member of the OGN was invited to their meetings and noted that there could be more openings created for civil society to participate in this forum and similar fora. Germany could also learn from other OGP participating countries which have not always used a formal multi-stakeholder forumRegular dialogue between government and civil society is a core element of OGP participation. It builds trust, promotes joint problem-solving, and empowers civil society to influence the design, imple..., such as the Slovak Republic, which previously organised thematic consultations and working groups to develop its 2019-2021 action plan.

[15] The IRM has maintained the original numbering of the commitments in the third action plan: 6.1-6.9 for the federal government, 7.1 and 7.2 for the joint federal – Lander commitments, and 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 for the Lander commitments.

[16] As an example, the Canadian Parliament’s LegisINFO database provides a variety of information about individual bills, https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bills.

[17] According to BMVI’s current considerations, times and information on various stages of the regional planning procedures (ROV) and approval procedures (POV) will be recorded and published, such as preparations, establishment of the PoV, environmental impact assessments (if necessary), revisions of the plan to the responsible authority, the length of the consultation process, and the time of the planning approval decisions.

[18] See Estonia’s OGP action plans, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/members/estonia/commitments/EE0054/ and https://www.opengovpartnership.org/members/estonia/commitments/EE0048/

[19] Netherlands Action Plan, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/members/netherlands/commitments/NL0049/