Application-Free Government: Services That Reach People on Their Own

Every public service today begins with the same step: someone has to apply for it. Those who do not know they are entitled to a benefit, who do not understand the form, or who miss the deadline go without, even though the state has long held all the data it needs. In the self-driving state, the direction reverses: the service reaches people on its own. This article describes what application-free government means, why it has worked on a small scale in Austria since 2017, and what its prerequisites and limits are.

From the office without forms to the office without applications

The previous article in this series, The Office Without Forms, was about replacing supporting documents with registers and reducing forms to what the state does not yet know. That is a big step, but not yet the goal. An office without forms still waits for someone to get in touch. An office without applications does not wait.

Hendrik Scholta, Willem Mertens, Marek Kowalkiewicz, and Jörg Becker captured this difference precisely in 2019 with their stage model "From one-stop shop to no-stop shop" (Government Information Quarterly). They describe the digital maturity of a public administration along three dimensions: how integrated data collection is (one form per request, or no form at all), how integrated data storage is (departmental solution or government-wide), and for what purpose data is used (reactively on request, or proactively and predictively). The one-stop shop bundles all services in one place; the no-stop shop delivers them without anyone having to stop and submit anything.

In our book Der selbstfahrende Staat (Springer Gabler 2024, in German), which I wrote together with Patrick Pils and Philipp Seper-Ambros, this target picture is part of the DNA of the self-driving state. We describe the development as a path from "go-government," where we have to visit each authority individually, via "one-stop government" with a single visit, to "no-government," in which the most important services are delivered on the state's own initiative. The third dimension of Scholta and colleagues is the decisive one: digital forms and connected registers are means; the purpose is an administration that acts on its own from what it already knows.

The proof has existed since 2017

Application-free government sounds like the distant future. In fact, Austria has had it since 2017: the application-free employee tax assessment. Anyone who does not file a tax return has one prepared by the tax office, based on the data that is already available: income, social security contributions, and income tax deductions. If a refund results, it is paid out without the person concerned ever having seen a form. For many employees and small business owners who are less well versed in tax matters, this is a convenient way to receive their refund without collecting documents and filling out forms.

What is remarkable is what lies behind this system: no artificial intelligence, but the mathematical calculation of the tax and the processing of a complex yet formal set of rules. That is precisely the point I believe is underestimated. A great many administrative decisions are already determined by laws and regulations in such a way that they can be mapped unambiguously into software as a calculation or a decision chain. In the book, we estimate that at the stage of the automated state alone, 50 to 60 percent of decisions can be made this way. Proactivity is therefore initially not a question of technology but of organization: which data is held where, who is allowed to link it, and which rule triggers which service?

As long as the application is the rule, the person carries the burden of proving their entitlement. When the service becomes the rule, the state carries the responsibility to use its data.

Three life situations in which the state acts on its own

In the book, we assign all services for the population to 19 life situations and describe for each the evolution from the analog state through the digital and the automated state to the self-driving state. Three of them show particularly well how an event in a person's life sets a service in motion without an application.

Birth. In the analog state, parents appear at the office in person and present papers. In the automated state, the hospital administration enters the newborn's data once; following the once-only principle, this produces the birth certificate with date, place, and the identity of child and parents. All follow-up processes start automatically: notification of the responsible authorities, issuance of identity documents, submission of the applications for benefits. In the self-driving state, even this last application disappears: the child benefit is paid out, the child's health insurance is established without any further action by the parents, and parental leave is administered through the connection with employers. For home births, midwives or public health officers collect the data; the process itself does not change.

Unemployment. Today, the person concerned registers, submits pay slips, and waits for approval. In the self-driving state, the end of an employment relationship is recorded immediately. If no new employment is reported, the unemployment registration is created automatically, and unemployment benefits are granted on the basis of the employment history. In parallel, the system proposes suitable jobs and qualifications in shortage occupations, matched to the person's education and skills. The service begins the moment the need arises, not the moment someone finds the right application.

Education and funding. A central education register makes certificates and degrees available once. At the automated stage, it checks admission requirements; at the self-driving stage, it calculates grants and scholarships and awards them proactively to those who are entitled to them. For a single working parent, this means: all the support they are entitled to, from housing benefit to child benefit, without lengthy research and application procedures. The sole earner tax credit is calculated automatically, and if the other parent does not pay maintenance, advance maintenance payments are granted without a form having to be filled out first.

What application-free services require

The path from application to proactive service runs through four prerequisites that depend on one another.

• Once-only as principle and as practice. Every piece of information is collected only once and is available to all authorized bodies. The EU has anchored the principle in Regulation (EU) 2018/1724 on the Single Digital Gateway; in practice, it meets federal reality. Residence registration is organized across states and municipalities despite a central register of residents, and in asylum law a central statute is applied differently in the individual states. Application-free services therefore need clarity about who is responsible for which master data and how mutual, logged access is regulated.
• Digital base services. Digital identity, digital file, digital certificate, digital payment, and the digital twin of citizens are the building blocks that every specialized procedure draws on. Without them, every proactive service remains an isolated solution.
• Rules as software. An entitlement can only be recognized automatically if the conditions from the law are available as a set of rules. This has succeeded for the employee tax assessment; with every change in the law, however, the decision paths still have to be reprogrammed today. How laws can be represented directly as a model is what we describe in the book under the term digital legal twin.
• A right to services without application. In the book, we formulate it as an entitlement: citizens should be able to receive state services without an application. To this end, the administration provides the Public Service Wallet, in which all supporting documents and authorizations are available electronically and in which people can check their status in each life situation at any time.

The last point is more than technology. It shifts responsibility from the person who has to prove their entitlement to the state, which has to use its data for the benefit of the people. This reversal is the actual reform; everything else is implementation.

Limits: consent, data protection, and political decisions

Application-free must not mean paternalistic. In the Public Service Wallet, people grant releases or refuse data disclosures, and all forms remain available in analog form on request. Not everyone owns or wants a smartphone. That is why the self-driving state includes a regional service center where trained staff receive a request, as well as the option of sending staff to the homes of people who are ill or frail. For the software behind it, it is irrelevant by which route a request arrives. The caseworkers who type in data today gain time for the few people who need personal support.

Data protection is regularly cited as an obstacle in this context. I consider it a condition: laws and regulations define which data the state may collect, link, and process; every use is logged; the decision logic is openly accessible so that its lawfulness can be checked by everyone. The state collects only the data it needs for its tasks. What we do criticize in the book, however, is a form of data protection that above all protects authorities from using their data for the benefit of the people.

And some things remain political. Whether the amount of child benefit is tied to compliance with preventive and follow-up care measures, whether social and transfer payments are assessed individually rather than as a lump sum, whether a register may also produce forecasts of future need: none of this is decided by software, but by the legislature. In early June, the citizens of the European Union elected a new parliament. The question of how proactive a state should be toward its population belongs on the agenda of every legislative term, at the European as well as the national level.

The next step

Application-free government does not begin with a new platform but with taking stock: which of an organization's services are fully determined by rules, which data for them already exists in registers, and which event in people's lives could trigger the service? This list yields the order of implementation. How we support public administrations along this path is described on the Public Administration page; the vision as a whole can be found on the page about the book.