Digital Competences in Public Sector Education as a Prerequisite for e-Government

Abstract

e-Government in Germany is usually not ranked top of the class in Europe. Rankings, such as the EU eGovernment Benchmark 2022, UN E-Government Development Index and others show that Germany is rather poorly ranked among the developed nations of the world. The authors assume that there is a correlation between the quality of Public Sector Education regarding digital competences and the quality of e-Government the so digitally educated civil servants can deliver. Civil servants in Germany usually graduate from one of the approximately 20 main universities of public administration; hence, an overview of the digital competences taught there is the core of this article. The main result is that both the quantity and the quality of digital competences taught need to be improved and, in the worst case depend on the university chosen, even zero digital competences are taught to the future civil servants.