Enlarge image
Digital Minister Wissing: "Not ambitious" enough
Photo:
CLEMENS BILAN v EPA
At the Berlin digital conference re:publica in June, the timetable seemed clear: Before the summer break, Volker Wissing indicated that he wanted to bring his new digital strategy to the cabinet, the date was actually scheduled for July 6th, that would be Wednesday.
The FDP man had renamed his ministry when he took office and put digital ahead of transport, so he wants to act and be perceived as Germany's first digital minister.
In the coalition agreement, the traffic light government promised the country on many sides the overdue push for modernization.
The expectations are therefore high - possibly too high, as Wissing and his new digital team in the ministry suspected.
At his first major conference appearance as digital minister, Wissing indicated that things were not going as well as hoped in terms of digital policy in the traffic light: "I'm not satisfied yet," he commented on what other ministries had previously delivered to his house on the subject.
It was “not ambitious” enough for him, he wanted “put the butter in the fish”.
Above all, Wissing lacked highlights and outstanding features.
He thinks the in-house Mobility Data Space is something like that.
It should enable new business models on the basis of mobility and traffic data brought together there.
Apparently, things haven't improved much since then.
The paper is now only to be adopted after the summer at the planned cabinet meeting in Meseberg.
Official reason for the new postponement: You want to give the important topic maximum attention.
Above all, however, readjustments are apparently to be made: According to SPIEGEL information, there will be workshops over the summer for the responsible employees of the ministries in order to get them fresh ideas and a little bit on their toes.
Experts from the Work4Germany and Tech4Germany programs should provide support.
This can be seen as a friendly offer and support to collaboratively raise the paper to "a high level of ambition," as the introductory part of a current "working draft" puts it.
Or as tutoring after the award of certificates,
On Monday, Wissing's ministry sent the current status to the other houses before the corrections were made - for revision and, above all, for supplementation.
The thirty pages are a wrap-around, commenting on the digital policy legacy of the Merkel government in the very first sentence: "Germany needs a comprehensive digital awakening," it says, as one of the strongest economies, it has "only been in the middle for years when it comes to the topic of the future «.
The aura of a reboot is not spreading yet
Hardly anyone will disagree with the problem analysis, but a basic dilemma remains in the traffic light government: Wissing has secured the title of “Digital Minister” for himself, but de facto he is at best primus inter pares – and he still has to prove that.
Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) comments at least as often on digital topics, be it Telegram, hack-backs or the controversial chat control.
She is responsible for the important topic of administrative digitization and intends to present a cyber security agenda shortly.
Wissing has recently been rather modest about his role: He wants to set the pace and be a team leader, while the major digitization projects remain in the care and responsibility of the individual departments.
Wissing's people have therefore also formulated a kind of umbrella strategy in their "working draft".
A lot of it is not new, it ties in with ongoing or already known projects, so far so understandable.
So far, however, it has not spread the aura of a new start or departure.
The style of the paper, which describes the government's objectives with fictitious case studies in a future successfully digitized and diverse Germany, is comparatively innovative: In it, a diabetic Elif uses the blessings of the electronic patient file, her daily blood sugar values are automatically sent to her family doctor.
Mathilda and Ali are expecting parents who use a digital family assistant to quickly and easily submit the necessary applications online.
In these passages, the strategy reads like a digital wish, from mobility to health to artificial intelligence on the battlefield - but it has the bitter aftertaste that many of the goals described have long been reality elsewhere.
In addition, some things may seem all too familiar to Germans: the much-vaunted digital administrative services have been promised to citizens by various federal governments for two decades.
How the "implementation backlog" should be resolved
In order to finally “resolve the implementation backlog of the past legislative periods”, the traffic light is now hoping above all for a “leverage effect” from three selected projects: The country should finally get more powerful networks.
After the flop of the "ID wallet" shortly before the general election, there should also be "secure digital identities" as soon as possible.
In general, all new projects are to be approached in a standards-based, technologically open and interoperable manner - this should remove existing brake blocks and have an accelerating effect.
In its draft, the traffic light government sets the standards for the hoped-for progress itself: "In 2025 we want to be measured by the fact that..." is the most common sentence in the new German digital strategy, at least in its current version.
In terms of digital policy, however, the federal government will not only go into the summer break with the order for detention.
Your gigabit strategy, which should finally ensure a modern network infrastructure, will probably be passed by the cabinet next week.
It, too, contains few surprises – and above all it relies on the corporations actually fulfilling their investment promises totaling around 50 billion.
The federal government wants to make this as easy as possible for them: through faster digital approval procedures, for example, but also less complex laying procedures for fiber optics.
The results of the digital policy promises of previous federal governments are miserable, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz knows that too - after all, he was jointly responsible for them as Vice Chancellor.
Maybe that's why he's so unambitious on the subject.
In any case, he quickly handed over a large part of the digital tasks that had only migrated to the Chancellery a few years ago to the Federal Ministry of the Interior.
Like his digital minister, Scholz also appeared at re:publica.
When asked when exactly citizens will be able to renew their ID cards online, he said: "I don't want to say that exactly because I know the processes in Germany."