The federal cabinet has decided on the digital strategy for the traffic light. While the coalition partners are satisfied, others are less enthusiastic.
Federal Digital Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) was optimistic on Wednesday morning in Meseberg: Instead of getting lost in visions of the future, the traffic light is going to address digitization very specifically. No air taxis, but concrete implementation is the goal, said the minister. The document with which the SPD, Greens and FDP keep a promise made in the coalition agreement last autumn is 50 pages long: the digital strategy provides an overview of the projects of all ministries – from the environment to the interior ministry.
At noon, Chancellor Olaf Scholz emphasized that the government does not want to accept the international rankings in which Germany regularly performs poorly when it comes to digitization. Germany is currently in 13th place out of 27 in the EU’s DESI ranking. Digital Minister Volker Wissing now wants to get Germany as far into the top 10 as possible.
In order for this to succeed, all ministries should deliver. In the past few months, they had to register their projects – and say which goals they want to achieve and when, by 2025 at the latest. The Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMDV) hopes that these will make progress verifiable. Volker Wissing describes the projects that are now included as “concrete lighthouse projects, how we want to advance Germany”. 18 of them are classified as lighthouses, which should modernize Germany in individual areas.
Lighthouses leverage digitization
There are also three so-called “leverage projects” that are at the heart of the digital strategy as a prerequisite for others: The first is the expansion of broadband and mobile communications. When it comes to fiber optic expansion, the ambitions have already been scaled back as part of the gigabit strategy that has already been decided: by 2030, half of all households should be supplied with fiber optics. The BMDV also includes data infrastructures in this digital infrastructure lever. The second lever: standardization. According to the responsible digital ministry, Germany needs to be more actively involved in international standardization bodies. Associations and companies in particular should work more intensively on standardization in the future, because norms and standards also reflect social and political ideas.
The third lever: a digital identity offered by the state. This should open up a “possibility space”, says Christian Lindner at noon. So far, digital identification has not been very successful in Germany, most recently a privately offered procedure was outwitted with VideoIdent. This also increased the pressure to act. Wherever secure identification is required, such as with banks or health data or with the state, analogous techniques such as the PostIdent procedure must otherwise be used.
However, the strategy itself remains vague, especially when it comes to state digital identity. This is also due to the fact that new opportunities are arising: the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which will come into force at the beginning of 2024, could force Apple to make its Secure Elements area accessible to third parties. A digital identity based on the electronic ID card could thus become much easier.
Administrative digitization should become a reality
The digital strategy contains hardly any fundamentally new projects. Many of the projects described are familiar ones, for example the digitization of administration should really take place now. As early as 2014, the government at the time wrote in its digital agenda: “We want to offer citizens who want to use digital services offered by the administration as simply and effectively as private providers do with their services, and at the same time meet the high demands on Fulfilling trust and security.”
Today it sounds like this: “Digitization should serve people and make their everyday work in administration easier,” said Nancy Faeser in the morning in Meseberg. In the traffic light, the SPD politician is the minister responsible for the online access law and its implementation – a fiasco that has lasted for years and which, in the confusion of federal, state and local authorities, failed to meet all the specified goals. Now the Online Access Act is to be revised again.
Many individual projects and unclear goals
The multitude of projects that the digital strategy describes had to be backed up by the ministries with targets. These vary between very specific information and very vague formulations. According to the Federal Ministry of Health, around 80 percent of those with statutory health insurance should use the electronic patient file by 2025. The e-prescription should meanwhile become the standard. By 2024, the Ministry of Justice wants to have completed a nationwide uniform video portal for court hearings and online appointments. The goals of the Ministry of Defense sound a lot more shaky: By 2025, the Bendlerblock would like to have “provided the initial capabilities for building up a consistent information and communication network on the battlefield for the troops.” The Federal Digital Ministry has presented the individual projects and targets on its own website.
However, what the federal government does not deliver with its digital strategy is an overall digital policy concept. The digital strategy has not resolved disputes about digitization between the coalition partners, which regularly delay the implementation of projects or make it difficult for the federal government to position itself in European legislative processes.
“I am disappointed with the digital strategy. With what is available, it was definitely not worth waiting eight months for,” says Nadine Schön, Vice President of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. “The reading reveals a lot of well-known things and little ambition.” For them, the paper approved by the cabinet today is insufficient on many levels. “I would have expected a strategy during the ‘turning point’ to network projects and underpin them with clear legislative proposals, programs and projects, budgets and timelines.”
Digital budget remains fuzzy
Budgets are one of the major bones of contention in digital strategy: a so-called digital budget was agreed in the coalition agreement. The self-proclaimed progressive coalition wanted to create incentives to tackle large projects – with extra money, in addition to the budget of the department. But so far there is no such budget. And whether it will come at all is currently open. “I am convinced that we will be able to implement it quickly,” says Jens Zimmermann, spokesman for digital policy for the SPD parliamentary group. “However, the corresponding budgetary funds – in the form of the digital budget, but also in each individual plan – must be made available for this.” The digital budget should have a control effect: almost a year after the election, the digital strategy now includes a work order for the Ministry of Finance, the Chancellery, the Digital Ministry and the Ministry of Economic Affairs on how a digital budget can be created. It should also be checked whether additional funds are needed at all.
Criticism of the procedure comes from the telecommunications association VATM. There one would have wished for a more powerful Digital Ministry. “Particularly thought-provoking is the lack of personal budget responsibility, which makes it even more difficult to achieve the goals,” says VATM Managing Director Jürgen Grützner. “With a minister without power and responsibilities that continue to be widely distributed and poorly coordinated, it will be difficult for Germany to keep up with the other industrialized nations.”
The fact that digitization is now a top priority can hardly be justified with the digital strategy. The implementation is to be accompanied by a state secretary’s committee – the previous federal government had irregularly called the ministers together for the so-called digital cabinet. All ministries must pull together if progress is really to be made, demands Ulrich Silberbach, the chairman of the civil servants’ union DBB. “Unfortunately, the fact that the coalition partners needed more than eight months for the final division of responsibilities for digitization does not bode well in this regard.” Criticism also comes from the Internet industry association Eco: “In my view, Germany, as the largest economy in Europe, should also be a pioneer and set benchmarks when it comes to digital transformation,” says its board member Oliver Süme, “I cannot see this claim in the present strategy.”
(bme)
