Users of the electronic citizens’ and organisations’ mailboxes (EBO) via the “My Justice Mailbox” (MJP) portal of the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) currently have no access to their correspondence. When making a call Home Page A message appears stating that maintenance work is currently being carried out. But none of this was announced. At this point there is also no mention of when the maintenance work should be completed.
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On the other hand, you can find it on the Federal ID portal of the Federal Ministry of the Interior Informationthat there are technical interruptions in the use of MJP since the afternoon of August 19, 2024. The problem is currently being analyzed and MJP cannot be used. It is expected to be available again in the late afternoon of today, August 22.
Launched in late 2023
Citizens and private law organisations such as clubs and companies can use the MJP mailboxes introduced at the end of last year to participate in electronic legal transactions with authorities, courts, lawyers, etc. A detailed description of the options for private individuals to participate in electronic legal transactions can be found in the article “Free postage” of C’T issue 7/2024 on page 158. Since the beginning of the month, there has also been an increase Federal Constitutional Court Participated in all courts, authorities, lawyers and other binding electronic legal transactions in 2018.
Among other things, authorities and courts can send decisions to users via mailboxes and thus effectively set deadlines for possible legal remedies. This failure is therefore extremely unfortunate for those affected.
Anyone who has not saved documents distributed and sent from the portal locally currently has no access. Without access, it is difficult to understand the course of communication. In order to avoid any losses if deadlines are missed as a result of MJP’s technical failure, those affected must be able to prove this to the relevant authority or in court. Apart from two reports online, there is currently no official confirmation.
Misunderstanding Feedback
Users who contacted Bund ID support at the Information Technology Center (ITZ-Bund) only received the following message: “We would like to inform you that we are currently analyzing your problem and will send you an email as soon as the process is completed with solution details. We are working hard to resolve the issue.”
The wording gives the impression that this is a personal problem for the user and not a technical problem for the operator of the MJP. The BMJ is formally responsible for this, the BMI is responsible for the linked federal ID, the ITZ is responsible for the technical operation and the publicly owned GmbH of Bremen is responsible for the development.
Distributed responsibilities, which can also lead to inconsistent communication between the departments involved about the outage, are characteristic of digitalization projects in public administration. Heise Online asked the bodies involved in the MJP in a collective request for clarification on the background and causes as well as possible remedies for users, for example through an official confirmation of the outage, which is probably still being processed, especially since it will also require coordination between each other. We will provide further information here as soon as the information becomes available.
(Tig)
