FDP on digital affairs

The FDP wants full recognition of esports and to classify it legally as a charitable (nonprofit) purpose. Clubs should also be able to use digital tools to simplify their administration.

Esports means competing in computer games. The FDP wants to treat esports as a nonprofit activity. Clubs then get advantages for it. Clubs should also be able to run their paperwork digitally.

Traditional sports clubs are also meant to benefit from the recognition. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the FDP wants to help build association and league structures. The setup of esports centers, including professional training, which has already begun, is to be supported. Digital tools are meant to reduce red tape for volunteers running clubs.

The FDP wants to designate selected regions as digital freedom zones with especially favorable conditions. This is meant to encourage new clusters in technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain. Existing clusters are to be expanded and linked through an innovation and transformation agency.

The FDP wants special regions for digital technology. It calls them digital freedom zones. Conditions there should be especially good. Companies and researchers should work closely together there. An agency should connect everything.

According to the platform, clusters should link business and research more closely and boost economic strength. In the freedom zones, conditions are meant to enable a broad push for digitization across daily life and the economy. As examples of existing projects, the FDP names Ruhr Valley and Circular Valley in Wuppertal. Such approaches are to be extended to current challenges and global trends.

The FDP wants to introduce electronic case files at all courts and prosecutors' offices and expand video hearings. Artificial intelligence and legal tech are to support the justice system, while final decisions stay with humans.

Courts should work with digital files instead of paper. Hearings should be possible by video more often. Computer programs should help the justice system with its work. But in the end, people still decide.

According to the program, the tax and administrative courts already work fully electronically. If both parties request a video hearing, the court should as a rule have to order one. The FDP supports a shared justice cloud for the states and the joint case management system ("gefa"). AI is to help capture data, record and evaluate interrogations and trials, and assist applicants as a chatbot. The justice system is also to be well prepared for investigating cyberattacks, and the party welcomes the EU's Digital Services Act.

The FDP wants a digital-first principle for all public administration services. Every contact with an agency should also be possible online, and a digital citizen portal should bundle access.

The FDP wants people to be able to do all government paperwork online. There should be a right to this. People should rarely have to go to an office in person. An online portal for citizens should help with this.

Legal obstacles to electronic procedures should be removed systematically. Cases that require showing up in person should be cut to a minimum. The Wirtschafts-Service-Portal.NRW (business service portal), with about 250 services integrated by the end of 2021, should add another 250 in 2022. A digital citizen portal for private individuals should also be available by the end of 2022.

Citizens and businesses should have to submit standard data to public agencies only once. The FDP wants to prevent digitalization from becoming a burden through repeated data entry.

The FDP wants to introduce a guarantee. People should give their data to the government only once. After that, agencies should share the data with each other. This should save time and paperwork.

Digital processes should be designed statewide so that the same information does not have to be entered again for each procedure. The platform cites data exchange between the tax administration and trade offices as an example. It also mentions a basic register for company master data, linked to a single nationwide business number.

The FDP wants to use blockchain, artificial intelligence and large cloud services in public administration. A hyperscaler data center should be located in North Rhine-Westphalia and serve as the central hub of the nationwide government cloud.

The FDP wants to use new technology in government offices. This includes artificial intelligence and blockchain. A very large data center should come to North Rhine-Westphalia. Government data should be stored safely there.

Blockchain is meant to let agencies manage procedures, documents and register data jointly and in line with data protection; combined with AI, entire processes should run automatically. Public IT providers should form partnerships with the IT industry that secure a transfer of know-how. A private cloud run in a hyperscaler should consolidate the state administration's varied IT systems and lower costs. The FDP also expects this to ease the shortage of IT specialists.

The FDP wants to regulate how public agencies handle data they collect with drones. Rules on storage and deletion are meant to protect personal data and privacy.

Government agencies sometimes use drones with cameras. They may film people while doing so. The FDP wants rules for this. The rules should say how long data is kept and when it is deleted.

Agencies use drones, for example, to search for missing persons, detect fires or identify pollution. According to the platform, this use is still largely unregulated. Because most drones can carry high-resolution cameras, the FDP sees a risk to personal data.

The FDP wants effective data protection for private individuals and businesses and more awareness of it in society. At the same time, data protection rules from the analog era should not hinder digital services.

The FDP wants to protect private data well. This applies to people and to companies. But the rules should not block new digital services. Each person should decide about their own data.

The guiding principle is citizens' sovereignty over their data. Businesses, public agencies and the state commissioner for data protection and freedom of information should hold a regular exchange. The aim is to identify and implement ways to develop the legal rules further.

The FDP wants to make digital solutions from the model regions and central state services available to every city and town. Municipalities should be able to keep using online services on state portals free of charge after 2022.

Some regions have tested new digital services. The FDP wants to bring these services to all cities and towns. Towns should keep using the state's online services for free. By 2025, everyone should notice the digital administration.

The platform cites the Smart City app and the state's municipal and participation portals as examples. The guiding idea is the "one for all" principle: one government body develops a service and others reuse it. The FDP seeks a consensus with the municipal umbrella associations on voluntary, free reuse. Successful solutions such as the Wirtschafts-Service-Portal.NRW should also be open to other German states.

The FDP wants to go beyond mere online access and supports a federal law on fully digital processing of government services. With artificial intelligence, services are to be delivered entirely automatically.

Today people can file some applications online. The FDP wants more: the office should handle the whole process digitally. Computers should do many tasks on their own. Staff then have time for other work.

The Online Access Act (Onlinezugangsgesetz) is to be implemented by the end of 2022, but it only requires digital access. The FDP wants to develop so-called no-stop agencies in which services run fully automatically with AI. The federal government should consider simple digital implementation when drafting laws; the FDP promises the same for state laws. Public bodies should get more advice and training. Using data the state already holds, services should become possible without anyone applying, and the investments should yield a digitalization dividend through leaner processes.

The FDP wants to merge the fragmented landscape of public IT providers in North Rhine-Westphalia into one overall solution. A cross-ministry digital agency is meant to expand the digital check for new legislation.

North Rhine-Westphalia has many different public IT providers. The FDP wants to bring them together better. A new digital agency should advise the ministries. The ministries must use this advice.

Realigning the state's central IT providers is meant to create partnerships with municipal providers and public IT operations in other states. The FDP expects this to relieve municipalities and help with the shortage of skilled workers. The digital agency could be attached to the CIO, the state government's IT commissioner. Start-ups that specialize in digital government services should be matched with the administration through new formats. Across states, IT standards for interfaces should be harmonized.

The FDP wants to complete the gigabit broadband rollout in every part of the state by 2025 and close remaining gaps in mobile coverage. The aim is equal access and an end to locational disadvantages for rural areas.

The FDP wants fast internet everywhere in the state. The rollout should be finished by 2025. Cell phone coverage should also work well everywhere. This should help villages and rural businesses most.

Providers are to compete over who can deliver coverage at the lowest cost. In mobile communications, the FDP wants to close the last dead zones and speed up the 5G rollout. The platform sees a stable nationwide network as a precondition for innovations such as self-driving cars. It also wants to fund further research and practical trials of 6G technology.