Critical, Digital, and Secure? Governing Resilience in the Digital Administration under Conditions of Fragmented Governance

Abstract This article examines how governance structures in Germany’s federal system shape the resilience outcomes of administrative digitalisation. Public administration occupies a dual role in the emerging German KRITIS regime: it functions both as an enabler of critical infrastructure protection (CIP) and as critical infrastructure (CI) itself, insofar as essential public services increasingly depend on digital systems and inter-organisational interfaces. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies and digital-government research, we develop an analytical heuristic of five dimensions of digital-administrative resilience (centrality, interoperability, portability, skills, institutional coordination) and apply it to two policy domains: the implementation of the Online Access Act (OZG) as a reference case and the evolving KRITIS framework as a policy test case. The analysis reveals that the KRITIS regime reproduces governance risks familiar from the OZG experience - ambitious guiding models paired with insufficient implementation preconditions, fragmented responsibilities, and the systematic downward shifting of operational burdens to municipalities. We conclude that governing resilience requires a shift from security as an additional regulatory layer to resilience as a capacity-bound, federally implementable infrastructure policy.