People who are not digitally skilled or who have been placed under administration are still not able to manage government affairs digitally. This is the conclusion of the National Ombudsman a report published Tuesday. According to the report, State Secretary Alexandra van Huffelen (Kingdom Relations and Digitalization, D66) will not keep her promise to have this arranged before the end of 2023.
Only 24 of the 342 municipalities currently make it possible to give an authorized representative access to DigiD when people cannot or are not allowed to arrange their digital affairs themselves. Access is even more poorly regulated at organizations in which different authorities work together, such as the GGDs. Of these, only 2 of 1,300 organizations allow someone else to authorize DigiD.
According to the report, around 273,000 people in the Netherlands are under administration and 2.6 million people are not digitally skilled. This group will be “extra trapped” by limited access to DigiD, the ombudsman writes. Moreover, according to the report, attorneys and curators spend an unnecessary amount of time arranging digital government affairs. Sometimes they use the personal DigiD of a loved one or client to log in, against the rules.
The National Ombudsman published a critical report on the accessibility of digital government services in 2017, in which the authorization of representatives in DigiD was also a point of attention. The government has since improved its accessibility in a number of areas, for example by always being available by telephone or counter, in addition to the online counters. The ombudsman calls on the State Secretary to come up with a clear and feasible plan of action within three months.
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