With the social platform (Sozialplattform), Germany is taking a visible step towards a digital welfare state.As a central portal, it enables online applications, a personalised ‘social benefits finder’ and online appointment bookings, among other things – proactive allocation of benefits by means of automatic data processing of linked registers is also being considered.
However, the implementation of the platform project is confronted with a traditionally decentralised welfare state governance and a resulting IT landscape which is heavily fragmented due to the boundaries of federal states and municipalities with very different software solutions for the same welfare state services.
Due to the lack of standardisation in German administrative digitilization, the dangers or potentials (depending on the point of view) of a central social platform that brings together previously disparate data does not appear to play a discernible role.