A new program by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs titled “Das Digitale Amt” will create the building blocks necessary to successfully digitize public administration in Austria. Together with the Danube University Krems, Prof. Michael Mayrhofer’s team at the LIT Digital Transformation and Law Lab at the Johannes Kepler University Linz will be a scientific part of the project.

The digitization process will facilitate Austrian administration however when it comes to services and processes, the implementation itself will bring enormous challenges regarding its citizens’ user-centered expectations, businesses and public employees. The new developments and starting points will call many of these processes and basic fundamental procedures into question, meaning the digitization process has to adjust to accommodate various aspects. Digitization is not only a technical challenge but a fundamental cultural change to the economy, society, and administrative procedures and will also eventually involve organizational issues. The “Digitale Amt” program will focus on creating corresponding organizational, technical, and the federal legal basis to outline and define digital administration in the future.

The “Digitale Amt” program kicked off on January 31 in Vienna with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Austrian Minister Margarete Schramböck, Gov. Johanna Mikl-Leitner (Lower Austria), and Municipalities President Alfred Riedl in attendance. Prof. Michael Mayrhofer (LIT Law Lab) and Prof. Peter Parycek (Danube University Krems) spoke about the program to over 200 audience members.  Prof. Mayrhofer led the afternoon breakout-session which featured presentations by JKU Professor Sepp Hochreiter (LIT AI Lab) and JKU Professor Katharina Pabel (Institute for Administrative Law and Administrative Education). The presentations drove important discussions pertaining to the constitutional challenges of digitization and other cutting-edge topics that the Linz Institute of Technology (LIT) and the LIT Law Lab aim to tackle.

JKU Rector Meinhard Lukas remarked, “The Linz Institute of Technology conducts interdisciplinary research and is an ideal partner when it comes to driving advancements in digitizing public administration. We are in a unique position to combine legal expertise at the Law Lab with technological expertise at LIT. This is a clear advantage for research in Linz.”

Photos free of charge, photo credit: BMDW/Philipp Hartberger

Photo 1: Prof. Michael Mayrhofer, Municipality President Alfred Riedl, Austrian Minister Margarete Schramböck, Gov. Johanna Mikl-Leitner, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Prof. Peter Parycek

Photo 2: Prof. Michael Mayrhofer and Prof. Peter Parycek with ceremony moderators, Peter Madlberger and Nina Kraft