Germany’s Digitalcheck, a digital-readiness check for drafting policies and legislation, is a political objective of the current German government and has been applied to new regulation initiatives as of 1 January 2023. 

Applying an iterative and user-oriented approach, Digitalcheck has been developed under the leadership of the German Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community (BMI) jointly with an interdepartmental working group, the German National Regulatory Control Council (NKR) as the auditing body as well as the federally owned DigitalService. 

Digitalcheck is based on five principles for digital-ready legislation which provide a common ground for the different institutions involved. It provides processes, methods, and skills for producing digital-ready policies in order to enable simple and effective implementation, taking full advantage of digital opportunities for the sake of all stakeholders. To this end it is crucial that policy drafters consider requirements for, and possibilities of, digital execution as early as possible in the drafting process. 

Adopting this kind of “digital first” mentality implies a new mindset and a whole new set of processes and competencies for policy-making. This kind of transformation requires time and an iterative approach based on a long-term vision. Hence Digitalcheck evolves continuously, based on hands-on experiences, evaluation of data, and feedback by government staff and others involved in law drafting and enforcing. 

Get a glimpse behind the scenes and find out more about the improvements in the latest Digitalcheck version (published just over two weeks ago) in this blog post, co-authored by the joint Digitalcheck team from BMI and DigitalService.