Around three quarters of the global population uses the internet. Of these more than 67 percent are social media users according to a study released by Statista. These statistics may lead many to believe that the world is very much digitalized. But generalizations always face high important imbalances between and within the countries.
Speaking about gender, 70 percent of men and 65 percent of women are internet users. Still, the United Nations says that 2. 9 billion people are offline. It is true this hits mostly developing countries where there is a lack of infrastructure, electricity, broadband, etcetera. Yet, there is a digital divide in developed countries too. In Europe, between four and five percent of the population - aged 17 to 64 - has never been online with important differences between Nordic countries, where almost everyone is connected and nations like Croatia, Greece and Portugal where 13.5 percent, 11.1 percent and 9.8 percent are not users.
The Waseda University Institute for Digital Governance released a report in 2025 on World Digital Government Rankings. The report features 25 nations and the way they have digitalized public services. The report uses ten indicators to measure availability of public services online, such as network infrastructure, optimization of administrative management, progress of various online application services, usability of homepage/portal site, government performance, digital government strategy and promotion measures, enhancement of electronic participation in citizen administration, open government and digital transformation, cybersecurity and information and communication technologies and emerging tech.
Of the 25 countries listed, only three, Thailand, Indonesia and India are developing. The dominant portion are the developed economies led by the United Kingdom in the first place, followed by Denmark, Singapore, Estonia, South Korea, Netherlands, United States, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Finland, Canada, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Australia and Spain. This means, for instance, that in the United Kingdom, the population can access most public services online. Why is this important? Well, the study suggests there is a correlation between digital government and economic growth. It also benefits national economic activities and national security focused on digital assets and data - Estonia’s rank in the study can be explained as a result from the terrible cyberattack performed by Russia as retaliation for nationalist actions against ethnic Russians in the Baltic country back in 2007, thus Tallin decided to develop a robust cyber strategy and infrastructure. Interesting to note, the distinction between civilian and military applications will weaken the more societies digitalize. Digitalization is part of the sustainable development goals (SDG) where, again, most developing countries seem to have been left behind.
One developed country where public services require paper and fax is… Germany! One may be surprised to know that a country that is a leader in several technologies such as wind energy, manufactures, financial services and such, still needs users to request in person a large number of governmental services. Not only that: around three-quarters, or 77 percent of German companies still use fax machines and 25 percent of them send faxes often or very often.
In fact, the World Digital Government Rankings of the Waseda University Report ranks Germany at 12th, behind the United States and Japan - which rank 7th and 9th respectively - but also smaller countries like Denmark (2nd), Finland (10th) and Canada (11th). Why is that? It could be said that Germany, being a big country with a population of 83.5 million people is more difficult to run than Denmark’s or Finland’s six million and 5. 6 million inhabitants, respectively. The contrary could be true as well: Japan, with a population of 123 million inhabitants, larger than Germany’s, seems to do better when it comes to digitalized public services.
Germany has a story of leadership in computer technologies. Back in the 19th Century, the American-German inventor Herman Hollerith, created the the Hollerith Electric Tabulating System, specializing in punched card data processing equipment, that was used in the United States under contract for the Census Office, to reduce the time of information processing from the 1880 and 1890 census. His company experienced several name changes as time went by until it became the International Business Machine Corporation (IBM) in 1924. The machines created by Herman Hollerith were sold to England and Wales, Italy, Russia, Austria, Canada, France, Norway, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines and yes, Germany too.
The book “IBM and the Holocaust” by Edwin Black published in 2001, explains the role the invention of Herman Hollerith had in the identification at the census in Germany of Jews by gender, age and profession in seven categories. When Hitler came into power, IBM maintained ties with nazi Germany and supported its government. Despite boycotts against the nazis by several companies, IBM was key in providing machines for censuses in Germany and other occupied countries like Poland, thus facilitating the extermination of Jews with precision at concentration camps. When the book was published several legal actions were filed against IBM subsidiaries in the United States, Germany and Switzerland on the grounds that the company facilitated human rights abuses by the Third Reich.
This is relevant because in today’s Germany there seems to be a resistance towards digitalization, even if this is intended to save time and improve Government efficiency and such. Even though the events that took place on the eve of and during WWII happened long ago, and despite the prevalence of new generations born in Germany after the end of that war, confidence in the German government is weak compared to Denmark’s. The comparison with Scandinavian is stark. Polls show that most Danes trust their government, while Germans are far more skeptical of centralized state data collection due to their Nazi and communist past. The use of personal data to spy on the population and control their lives seem to be very much alive in the memory of Germans today, thus impacting the attitudes toward availability of public services in the digital age. In this respect, a fax machine seems more trustful than personal data collection by digital means. It does not help either that every now and then, the theft of personal data or identities by criminal organizations plus the surveillance and screening of the population - like in the United States to identify potential terrorists and criminals - creates a feeling of losing privacy and personal security. So, although Germany may be behind the digitalization of public services compared to other developed economies, this seems acceptable because the alternative may bring memories of a very dark past.
Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned by María Cristina Rosas, a professor and researcher in the faculty of political and social sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. The column appears in The Rio Grande Guardian International News Service with the permission of the author. Rosas can be reached via email at: mcrosas@prodigy.net.mx
