The 6th eGovernment prize awarded to federal, state, and municipal administrations in the category “Best Virtual Organisation” goes to the German Emissions Trading Authority (DEHSt) at the Federal Environment Agency for its entirely electronic processing of business. At the award ceremony held on 8 September 2006 in Berlin, Dr. Thomas Holzmann, Vice-President of the Federal Environment Agency said, “We have carried out the modern instrument of environmental protection, emissions trading, electronically from the first to the very last step—from the application procedure to closure of a file. We are pleased to be voted “Best Virtual Organization” based on this holistic concept in less than three years of our founding.
Since the institution of the German Emissions Trading Authority (DEHSt) at the Federal Environment Agency in January 2004, all the internal and external processes of the new climate protection instrument of emissions trading has been performed electronically. DEHSt thereby also complies with the Federal Government’s extended document management project (DOMEA). In addition to software developed specifically for purposes of emissions trading, DEHSt also implements basic components of the Bund-Online-Initiative (federal government e-government initiative). The nearly 2,000 facilities participating in emissions trading report annual emissions using the web-based Form Management System (FMS), and all official correspondence transpires legally and securely via the Virtual Post Office (VPS). All content-based software applications are available through a federal government content management system (Government Site Builder, GSB) on a web site which serves as a centralized portal for communication. With a total of eight electronic applications, which include the German Emissions Trading Registry, the Federal Environment Agency has guaranteed a paper-free emissions trading procedure in Germany. The Federal Environment Agency sees the prize as an incentive to continue to optimise e-government for the benefit of customers.
An independent jury came to its decision based on the criteria of effectiveness, efficiency, degree of innovation, technology, virtuality, and transferability. The eGovernment competition, sponsored by the Federal Minister of the Interior, Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble, has now been awarded for the sixth time. A total of 60 organizations had applied this year. The competition was initiated by management and technology consulting services provider BearingPoint and the Cisco Systems technology company who have been committed to e-government projects in Germany since 2000.
More information about the jury and the competition is available at www.egovernment-wettbewerb.de (in German).
A background paper on the IT infrastructure of the German Emissions Trading Authority at the Federal Environment Agency is available.