About eGovernment Computing

eGovernment Computing

eGovernment Computing — published today under the title eGovernment – Verwaltung Digital — is Germany's leading specialist magazine for the digitalization of public administration, published by the Vogel Communications Group. Founded in 2001 by Werner Nieberle, the monthly title reaches IT and e-government decision-makers in federal, state, and municipal government with coverage of administrative digitalization, e-government, and public-sector IT security. With a distributed circulation of around 28,000 copies (IVW Q2/2025), the eGovernment Summit congress, and the "Unbürokratisch" podcast, it is the central media platform for Germany's public-sector digitalization community.

Overview

The magazine addresses the people who build Germany's digital state: CIOs and IT managers of federal ministries, state administrations, and municipalities, as well as the vendors, consultants, and policymakers who work with them. Its editorial program covers the full agenda of administrative digitalization: the implementation of the Online Access Act (Onlinezugangsgesetz), register modernization, digital identities, cloud strategies for public administration, IT security in the public sector, artificial intelligence in government, and the federal division of digital responsibilities through bodies such as the IT Planning Council (IT-Planungsrat) and FITKO.

The publication appears twelve times a year and, according to IVW figures for the second quarter of 2025, distributes 28,029 copies — including 17,993 e-paper copies — reflecting the title's successful digital transition within its professional audience. The print ISSN is 2941-2870 and the online ISSN 2944-3598. Beyond the magazine and the egovernment.de website, the brand organizes the annual eGovernment Summit — an exclusive gathering of high-ranking IT decision-makers from federal and state governments, hosted in recent years by the acting chair of the IT Planning Council — and publishes the "Unbürokratisch" podcast on bureaucracy reduction and digital administration.

The magazine's role extends into recognition and agenda-setting: its awards — including the Digital Transformation Award, the eGovernment Leadership Award, the eGovernment Kommunal Award, and the CIO of the Year chosen by readers — honor the personalities who have decisively advanced e-government in Germany, from state secretaries to municipal mayors, and give the industry's quiet achievers a rare moment in the spotlight. These awards, presented at the eGovernment Summit, make the title a convening power in the digitalization community.

History

The first issue of eGovernment Computing appeared in November 2001, launched to coincide with the "Moderner Staat" congress trade fair — the founding moment of Germany's e-government movement as an organized professional field. The founder was Werner Nieberle, who established the title within the Vogel IT-Medien in Augsburg, a subsidiary of the Vogel Communications Group (Vogel Business Media) headquartered in Würzburg. The launch timing captured the early momentum of administrative digitalization: the federal government's BundOnline 2005 initiative was underway, and public administrations were beginning their long journey toward online services.

Over the following two decades, the magazine chronicled Germany's uneven progress toward the digital state: the Deutschland-Online initiatives, the establishment of the IT Planning Council, the National Regulatory Control Council's bureaucracy-reduction agenda, the Online Access Act's ambitious deadlines, and the recurring debates about federalism as an obstacle to digitalization. The magazine's editors — over the years including Manfred Klein and Gerald Viola, and currently Stephan Augsten and Susanne Ehneß — provided continuity of coverage through changing governments and technology waves.

The title evolved with its market: from "eGovernment Computing" (eleven issues per year in its earlier form, ISSN 1860-2584) to the current "eGovernment – Verwaltung Digital" branding, reflecting the broadening of the field from government IT to the digital transformation of administration as a whole. The rename acknowledged that the magazine's subject was no longer a technical specialty but a political project touching every citizen's interaction with the state. The Vogel IT-Medien's 1989 founding mission — publishing specialist media for decision-makers concerned with the production, procurement, or deployment of information technology — provided the institutional framework. Sister offerings in the Vogel IT portfolio have included IT-BUSINESS and the SearchNetworking/SearchSecurity family of portals.

Coverage and Content

The magazine's editorial content is organized around the technology and policy stack of digital government. Technology coverage includes administrative cloud platforms, digital identity and signature infrastructure, register interconnection, AI applications in case processing and citizen services, cybersecurity architectures for public IT, and the modernization of legacy administrative systems. Policy coverage follows the legislative and organizational framework: the Online Access Act's implementation status, the IT Planning Council's decisions, FITKO's coordination role, data-protection requirements, and the federal budget lines for digitalization.

Best-practice reporting showcases digitalization projects from municipalities, states, and federal agencies — the implementations that work despite Germany's reputation for administrative backwardness. The awards coverage profiles the personalities behind these projects: recipients of the Digital Transformation Award, Leadership Award, and Kommunal Award, whose laudations document the state of the art in German administrative digitalization. Interviews with CIOs, state secretaries, and mayors provide the decision-maker perspective, while critical reporting holds failed projects and missed deadlines to account.

The eGovernment Summit functions as the brand's live journalism: an exclusive circle of federal and state IT decision-makers exchanging information under Chatham-House-like conditions, with the awards ceremony as its public face. The "Unbürokratisch" podcast extends the brand into audio, addressing bureaucracy reduction for a broader audience. Together, magazine, summit, and podcast form an integrated media platform for the digital-state community.

Organization and Ownership

The magazine is published by the Vogel Communications Group GmbH & Co. KG, Max-Planck-Straße 7/9, 97082 Würzburg — one of Germany's largest specialist publishing houses. Within the group, the title is produced by the Vogel IT-Medien in Augsburg, the group's IT publishing subsidiary; the group's publishing director for the title's history includes Werner Nieberle as founder and publisher (Herausgeber). The current editors-in-chief are Stephan Augsten and Susanne Ehneß.

The Vogel Communications Group's portfolio spans automotive, industrial, and IT media, and the e-government title benefits from the group's event infrastructure — notably the Vogel IT-Akademie, which organizes the eGovernment Summit. The business model combines subscriptions (print and e-paper), advertising from IT vendors targeting the public sector — one of the largest IT procurement markets in Europe — and the summit and awards business, a diversified mix that has sustained specialist publishing through the industry's digital disruption. With 28,029 distributed copies including nearly 18,000 e-paper copies, the title demonstrates the successful migration of a specialist professional audience to digital formats. No further financial details are publicly confirmed.

Digital Presence

The magazine's digital home is egovernment.de, the portal for daily news, background articles, and the magazine's digital editions. The website serves the public-sector IT community with continuously updated coverage between the twelve annual print issues, and the e-paper edition — accounting for the majority of distributed copies — is the primary reading format for much of the audience. The online ISSN 2944-3598 distinguishes the digital edition in bibliographic records.

The "Unbürokratisch" podcast extends the brand into audio journalism on bureaucracy reduction and digital administration, while the eGovernment Summit's website promotes the annual congress and its awards. The Vogel IT-Medien previously expanded the brand's digital footprint with the Healthcare Computing portal, applying the e-government editorial model to the digitalization of healthcare — a natural extension given the structural similarities between administrative and health IT. For a title serving Germany's public-sector digitalizers — a community defined by its struggle to modernize administration — the integrated platform of magazine, portal, e-paper, podcast, and summit represents a comprehensive media offering that has kept the 2001-founded brand at the center of its field for nearly a quarter century.