Working toward Administration 4.0 using digital expertise and a digital concept

In a recent survey conducted in 2018, the German Association of Towns and Municipalities found that around 90 percent of municipalities recognize the opportunities offered by digitalization. At the same time, 90 percent of respondents do not yet have a strategy in place for the necessary restructuring process.

How does CHG-MERIDIAN help public-sector clients begin their digitalization journey?

We take an end-to-end approach that sheds light on our customers’ current individual situation. We analyze the entire IT infrastructure, the processes, and the workflows, as well as the technology lifecycle. This allows us to optimize the IT infrastructure and reduce obsolete technologies while streamlining processes and increasing resource efficiency. The result is faster automated workflows, lower costs, and greater scope for investment. We also deploy efficient technologies and IT solutions that match the existing infrastructure, thus enabling our public-sector clients to accelerate their modernization and digital transformation programs.

Budgetary crises, cutbacks, and pressure to be transparent on the one hand, and investment in the digital revolution on the other. How can these things be reconciled?

The challenge in the public sector, in particular, is to develop end-to-end business concepts that are not only standardized and transparent but also flexible, determined by public-sector clients themselves, and customized to satisfy their individual requirements. This starts with the individual finance strategies for technology investments, continues with the implementation of the E-Government Act, and ends with the TÜV-certified data erasure for all assets. Our online technology and service management tool, TESMA®, is the answer to the pressure to be transparent. TESMA® brings together all administrative and technical business information and makes it available in real time to a wide range of departments. This reduces the workload at all levels and brings the desired transparency to the processes.

Since the company was founded in 1979, we have successfully handled a variety of projects in the public sector. We know the market and the political and legal frameworks, are familiar with the peculiarities at federal, state, and local level, and have grown with the developments and requirements of the times.

Over the many years that you have worked with public-sector clients, where have you encountered common issues and challenges?

The key point is to see digitalization as an opportunity and to view the change process in a positive light – as the chance to modernize administration and as an investment in the organization’s future viability. Crucial to this is that the mindset of everyone involved is geared towards its inherent potential. Digital change is also a cultural change. It requires strategic change thinking and change management, as well as the willingness to abandon silo thinking in favor of networked action. Digital transformation also requires an organizational transformation.

What does a strategy for such a comprehensive process look like? What should the infrastructure concept for Administration 4.0 be geared toward? What steps must the public sector take in order to get its employees on board? What solutions does the sector need to successfully address demographic change? Find out the answers in the full interview with Frank Schöneberg.