The Digital Ministry: The job advertisement

Contents

Today's election day for the 21st German Bundestag will bring some changes. And there is a good chance that, for the first time, Germany will then have a Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs that will really focus primarily on digital expertise. However, whoever succeeds three-quarter Digital Minister Volker Wissing will have to have quite a lot of qualifications – a hell of a job. The road to a possible digital ministry was long and marked by failures. But whether what comes next can really be effective depends on more than just the title. It also depends on what the task is and who it will be. This is exactly what today's Missing Link will attempt to do: A job description for Germany's future digital minister.

What you need to be able to do

Let's start with a few statements: Digital policy has been a key battleground of political debate, at the latest since Donald Trump took office. Recognizing this is the most important thing for any chancellor who emerges from today's election if a digital minister is to do their job seriously. Because it follows from this that digital policy is not an accessory or a side job to a main task.

The second observation: digital policy is German – but not only German. It is European in many places and international in others. From municipal to international standardization and agreements: Digitalization is a multi-level task that requires an appropriately capable actor and corresponding substructure.

The third observation: digital policy must be consistent. This means that it must be thought through from a clear, value-driven perspective and transferred to all relevant projects and their implementation. If you want the basic principles of individual self-determination, economic growth and stability as well as close integration with science, you have to think about everything from data protection to IT security, dependency management and financing issues from an economic perspective.

What your digital ministry must achieve

Germany's digital policy is not one. That's the simplest way to describe it so far. The collection of ideas and responsibilities is almost endless, with diametrically opposed interests and paths being pursued in parallel. If you say ethical AI, you can't reduce data protection at the same time. Those who say secure infrastructures cannot at the same time have masses of Chinese or US hardware installed in electricity, telecommunications and other infrastructures. If you say digital sovereignty, you can't just say that there are unfortunately no alternatives to Microsoft and Amazon's AWS.

A clear commitment is needed here: a digital ministry takes the reins for Germany to follow a clear path. Away from non-European providers and towards permanently reliable and controllable supply chains, especially as far as the state itself is concerned. A coherent and consistent goal is therefore needed, and this must be worked towards – also in the other departments. Because the Digital Ministry will not be able to stand alone in the future either.

What you need

For this to succeed at all, expertise must be pooled in the Ministry of Digital Affairs. In the political sphere, competence means, on the one hand, substantive and procedural knowledge, but also formal responsibility: the Digital Ministry must be given clear responsibilities. The first of these is responsibility for all digitization projects of the federal administration. From the infrastructure to the processes: There needs to be massive standardization and centralization here. Over the years, the federal, state and local governments have sunk billions into the digitization of administration. A digital ministry must put an end to this and consistently adhere to the recent insights that procedures must be digitized from start to finish and that not every municipality and every area should have its own isolated solution. At the same time, we should not lower the standards, as happened recently with the eID or the electronic patient file, for example, in order to have a solution at all – but rather raise them as high as possible.

The second is responsibility for all digital infrastructures that citizens and companies have to rely on in their everyday lives. This includes both mobile communications infrastructures and all variants of data cables, from frequency policy to undersea infrastructure and space.

The third responsibility is responsibility for all fundamental EU issues: From AI to data protection and data use, from platform regulation and digital competition law and consumer protection to administrative digitalization and the issue of digital economic development policy, for example the development of new capacities for sovereignty-critical products, intermediate products and services. The ministry must be able to do all of this. And this also means that the research projects that are relevant to this must be shifted from the Ministry of Research – because so far, this has been a structural scattergun approach without concrete goals.

All of this requires a massive technical foundation. Not only does the ministry itself need to equip itself with specialists – There are quite a few of these in Germany, including in ministries. But also that the federal government must assign competent authorities to the Ministry of Digital Affairs. Without the Federal Office for Information Security and the digitally relevant parts of the Federal Network Agency, without responsibility for the federal data centers, for digital identities and for the digitization of administration, it will not work. Because the ministry itself cannot be responsible for doing, for implementing.

What awaits you

But what does all this mean for a potential digital minister? Ministers don't have to be specialists. But they do need a basic interest in a topic in order to be able to do their job conscientiously. Especially in an area as diverse as digital policy. This is because a deeper basic understanding of issues is actually required here – which also takes place in a huge lobbying shark tank and in international minefields that are often miles away from substantive policy.

One basic problem remains: who could head such a ministry and bring the necessary political weight to bear? This question has been the subject of intense debate among experts in Berlin for weeks. However, there are no obvious candidates across party lines who have both the necessary familiarity with the topic and the political clout to be assertive enough in the cabinet and at European level. CSU politician Dorothee Bär is said to be keen to become Minister for Family Affairs, Lars Klingbeil is said to have ambitions for the Ministry of Defense and Renate Nikolay, Deputy Director General of the Directorate General Connect at the EU Commission and currently probably the most experienced German digital politician, would probably be difficult to convince in Berlin party circles.

Yet, a heavyweight would be needed. After all, if money is to be spent on new projects in the coming months, it will not be an easy debate – no matter how sensible the idea may actually be. This will also mean that some previous digital projects will have to be scrapped. For example, fiber optic expansion is only worthy of funding in absolutely exceptional cases and whether a data institute is needed is also debatable. And if billions are not only needed for chip factories, then this will not be an easy thing to organize either. Accordingly, someone needs to be at the helm who can actually push this through. But that person is not in sight.

Perhaps we will continue to muddle along after all?

Neither Friedrich Merz nor any other politician from the parties that have spoken out in favor of a strong and independent digital ministry recently has yet made a serious personnel proposal. Lateral entrants from the world of business usually lack the knowledge of the administration. The majority of previous digital politicians have not yet reached the level required to become ministers -or have even ended their careers when the 21st Bundestag convenes. Perhaps it would only be logical to say at the end of a short, but extremely sobering election campaign in terms of digital policy: it hasn't worked very well so far – but we'd rather leave the digital ministry alone in the next government. Because if there is no one who can really do it, it might ultimately be better to carry on muddling along as before. Or simply let Volker Wissing, who is already non-party anyway, continue with the job. After all, if no more suitable candidate can be found, it might not be such a good idea to advertise the position at the moment.

(nie)