Digital sovereignty: Federal Ministry of the Interior dumps ZenDiS boss

One of two managing directors of the Center for Digital Sovereignty (ZenDiS), a federally owned limited liability company, has been dismissed with immediate effect. Jutta Horstmann had only been appointed Managing Director of ZenDiS in October 2024 to drive forward the "Strategy for Strengthening Digital Sovereignty".

Markus Richter, the responsible State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior and also the Federal Government Commissioner for Information Technology, had said at the time of the appointment in October that "with the appointment of the new management, the management of ZenDiS is well positioned". Horstmann previously worked for various companies as CTO, COO and CEO and was considered a good choice for the position in industry circles.

According to a spokesperson for the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which is the sole shareholder of ZenDiS, the move is due to the need to "further increase the efficiency and speed of administrative digitization". "To achieve this, it is important to bundle processes and competencies." Digital sovereignty remains a high priority for the administration.

The BMI had dismissed Jutta Horstmann as one step in this planned bundling -- this was formally carried out the day before yesterday, apparently without prior notice or consultation with the person concerned. "This step was now necessary because certain deadlines had to be observed." It is unclear which deadlines could be meant by this -- there are usually no probationary period agreements in managing director contracts. The second managing director, Alexander Pockrandt, has at least not yet been dismissed.

Apparently dismissed without warning

Horstmann was apparently caught off guard by the dismissal: the day before yesterday, she gave a keynote speech on strategies for a possible breakaway from proprietary IT systems at the Free Software Foundation Europe symposium in Essen. Participants at the event reported that there was no talk of her leaving. The Managing Director recently made clear demands to politicians to ensure the promised funding for ZenDiS – due to the lack of a federal budget, the society would lack the promised funds of 40 million euros per year.

"In relation to the approximately 16.6 billion euros in federal funds that, according to a recent calculation, have flowed into administrative digitization projects in the last four years, that would only be around 0.25 percent of the budget," the ZenDiS Managing Director recently calculated in an interview with eGovernment magazine. Only a fraction of this is currently available. "In view of the current political situation in the world, this is grossly negligent," Horstmann criticized the situation.

Among other things, ZenDiS develops the Linux-based administration desktop OpenDesk, version 1.0 of which was released in November 2024. It currently has more than 70,000 users. The federally owned company also operates OpenCode, a code repository for the federal administration. In view of the difficulties in transatlantic relations, a greater move away from proprietary solutions is currently seen as politically desirable.

In political and industry circles, it is very likely that the ZenDiS managing director fell victim to the planned reorganization of responsibilities in the black-red federal government. The new Ministry for Digitization and Administrative Modernization, which is to be led by the CDU, is also likely to involve a relocation and restructuring of the subordinate authorities and the federally owned GmbH landscape. Berlin is currently still coordinating which areas of which ministries will belong to the Ministry of Digitization in the future - this will ultimately be determined by the so-called organizational decree, which will only be implemented after the election and appointment of the Federal Chancellor.

(mack)