The German County Association ("Deutscher Landkreistag"), an umbrella association of all 294 German districts at federal level, published a position paper on the Digitisation of public administration. One of the five demands towards the federal level underlines the urgency of the implementation of the once only principle. 

According to the assocation it must finally be possible for the public sector to make full use of data once it is available, to relieve the burden on citizens and companies. Following this path, entries in applications can be prefilled, constant new entries and repetitions avoided, and certain applications can be fully removed, such as child benefit. 

To achieve the once only principle in Germany the association demands the establishment of legal and technical requirements. Therefore it's necessary that data protection law has to permit an exchange of information between federal administrations and municipalities. Furthermore existing registers must be opened up for authorised access by the respective (specialist) administrations. 

The other four claims within the paper deal with more citizen centered public services, the independence of municipal service portals as well as the connected digital services and an e-government audit for all new legal regulations.

Landkreistag Vice President Joachim Walter said: "Germany still has a lot of work to do in digitisation. From the point of view of the administrative districts, which together with the municipalities have by far the most contacts to citizens and companies, consistent efforts and appropriate framework conditions are required."

For more information: 

• Position paper (in German) 
• News about position paper from kommune21.de (in German)