The Senate Chancellery HH’s DigitalFirst programme

The DigitalFirst programme of the Department for IT and Digitalisation in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg is tasked with digitalising administrative services provided for the city's citizens and companies. It is thus making a significant contribution to the implementation of the Online Access Act in Hamburg.

The DigitalFirst programme is conducted centrally at the Senate Chancellery. Its focus is on the users of the online services and their benefits from optimised administrative processes.

This programme is designed to help the administration to

• Communicate with citizens online,
• Act proactively,
• Automate processes, and
• Reduce data input volume

The DigitalFirst programme provides advice and support to all Hamburg authorities in the creation of online services for the city’s service platform. It develops and establishes methods and processes, defines and monitors standards, and provides a modular and central IT platform, which includes features such as user accounts and e-payment methods.

DigitalFirst uses agile methods such as design thinking, minimum viable product and development in sprints, and is itself set up as an agile organisation with largely self-organised crews.

The programme is central to the implementation of the Online Access Act according to the one-for-all principle, and thus to the guidelines stipulated in the federal government's economic stimulus package adopted in 2020: DigitalFirst lays the organisational foundation and provides the project organisation for Online Access Act-related projects in Hamburg as well as ensuring their operation. The programme also assists Hamburg authorities in integrating their online services with the one-for-all services provided by other federal states.

PD has been supporting the programme since March 2020 with a team of consultants by providing support for the specific implementation of projects as well as for overarching strategic concerns.

• Consulting on the set-up and expansion of the programme’s management as well as the improvement of its strategy and processes (e.g. further improving the programme’s organisational structure, or setting up and expanding the programme's monitoring and reporting system)
• Consulting on the strategy for and implementation of organisation and project structures required for developing stand-alone online services and linking them to the one-for-all services provided by other federal states
• Operational management of implementation projects according to the one-for-all principle
• Consulting on more effective personnel and administrative structures to ensure the online services’ successful operation
• Consulting on and managing design processes for developing online services focused on the users’ perspective, and creation of prototypes (click dummy)
• Consulting on a technical operating concept

“One of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg's key objectives is to digitalise the administrative services provided for its citizens and companies. For this we not only depend on our own IT experts, but also on strong partners. I am extremely pleased that PD is such a partner at our side, helping us with our digital administration solutions. As in-house consultants, PD's professionals bring both a solid understanding of administrative processes as well as an 'outsider' perspective to the table. These qualitites in particular make our collaboration extremely effective and valuable.”

Christian Pfromm, Chief Digital Officer of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg