Interview on the coalition agreement: "Digital sovereignty is a phrase"

The digital ministry is far from everything: the coalition agreement between the SPD and CDU/CSU includes ambitious plans for digitalization, such as a "digital only" strategy with a mandatory citizen account and a ban on duplicate data collection by public authorities. The agreement also devotes a lot of space to the topic of digital sovereignty. Stefan Heumann, Managing Director of the think tank "Agora Digitale Transformation", assesses the plans in an interview with c't.

Mr Heumann, how ambitious is the coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU and SPD when it comes to digitalization?

There has been no lack of ambition in the past, but rather a lack of implementation. However, the new coalition agreement stands out in comparison to previous ones in that it brings together state modernization and digitalization. And for the first time, these two topics have been transferred to one ministry. That is the decisive step forward in the paper.

The traffic light party, for example, had also promised a digital awakening and also wanted to modernize the state. But in the end, no one at the cabinet table was responsible for this. That is already a big difference to the past and something I very much welcome.

Why do you think the Ministry of Digital Affairs is so important for achieving the goals in the end?

In the past, it was a huge problem that nobody was really responsible in all this confusion of competencies and coordination rounds. Even Volker Wissing, as Digital and Transport Minister, was ultimately not responsible for many topics, for example not for the digitalization of the administration. This always fell to the back of the queue in the Ministry of the Interior.

However, state modernization and digitalization are classic cross-cutting issues. The decisive factor will therefore be which cross-departmental management resources this digital ministry is equipped with. Unfortunately, there is little to be read about this in the coalition agreement. A digital budget is not explicitly mentioned; there is only talk of strategic IT management. A digital agency for the implementation of projects is also not explicitly mentioned.

A frequent objection to the digital ministry was that a lot of time would be lost in setting up the new structures, some say up to a year. How justified is this objection?

If you were to follow this argument, you would always be stuck in the status quo. We should take the time to set ourselves up sensibly. It is true that the federal administration is complex and that it is not being set up as quickly as we would like, but it probably won't take a year. If we continue to wrangle over competencies and without clear responsibilities, we will lose even more time.

"The problem was not that we haven't spent enough money so far, we've just invested it badly."

In the area of state modernization, for example, the treaty contains the announcement that federal relations are to be reorganized, including with an amendment to the Basic Law. Would that be a game changer for digitalization?

Definitely for the digitization of administration. Until now, the extremely slow coordination processes between the federal and state governments have been one of the main problems. This was often linked to negotiations about who pays how much. This simply makes things extremely slow until things actually get started. And even after that, the processes are extremely inefficient because software solutions are developed in parallel everywhere in the federal states, which leads to isolated solutions.

It is therefore a good thing that the coalition agreement addresses the amendment of Article 91c of the Basic Law. This would allow the federal government to take on more responsibility for basic components and standards and also supply IT solutions for new laws at the same time. The problem was not that we have not spent enough money so far, we have simply invested it badly.

And the second piece of good news is that the digital ministers of the federal states also adopted a paper just two weeks ago in which they also call for new regulations.

As far as ambition is concerned, it is also striking that the SPD and CDU/CSU are talking about "digital only" and accordingly want to make the citizen account and digital identity mandatory. That's a clear departure from the previous rule that the federal ID is voluntary, isn't it?

Yes, and that is one of the biggest controversies in the area of the digital transformation of administration. One problem with keeping the paper channels open is that there is not enough pressure on the administration to offer really good digital solutions. And it leads to digitalization not being perceived as a relief, but as something that has to be done on top. If you really want to make progress, then you have to consistently digitize services and also link this to the fact that paper applications are no longer possible. Other countries are also demonstrating this.

At the same time, we need a strategy on how to include non-digital-savvy population groups. But there are solutions for this, for example, the citizens' offices could support people. For example, there are digital terminals at citizens' offices where people without computers or smartphones can submit applications digitally and receive support in doing so. We should invest in these support services, because doing away with paper processes saves a lot of resources.

There is another ambitious-sounding point in the agreement, namely the ban on authorities collecting data from citizens twice. Do you think this will help in practice? After all, it's hard to imagine an authority being fined if it violates this.

Such a ban would be impossible to implement at present because in many cases the authorities are not yet technically capable of exchanging data with each other. The modernization of the register would have to be implemented first. My interpretation is that the statement is intended to increase the pressure for register modernization. There is currently a lack of incentives for rapid implementation. That's why I think the discussion on this is fundamentally good.

"It is important to develop your own skills and capacities."

What else did you notice in the contract in terms of digitalization?

The European-interoperable Germany stack and a reference to the relatively new Euro-Stack initiative are exciting. In general, digital sovereignty has a high profile. This fits in with what is going on geopolitically at the moment. It is important to develop your own skills and capacities. And the state spends billions on IT procurement every year, which is a huge lever.

Originally, the SPD wanted a clear target of 50 percent open source in procurement. Now there is only talk of ambitious targets for open source.

How credible is the promise of digital sovereignty if it doesn't include a hard open source target?

I'm not a fan of the term digital sovereignty because it has become a phrase. In the end, it depends on what you actually write into it. And that's where we continue to see the inconsistency that we know from past governments. They have always operated with this term, but then had very little concrete to offer.

That is why it is important that the coalition agreement at least mentions a strategic IT budget. This would enable the Ministry of Digital Affairs to determine what proportion of IT expenditure is being spent on digital sovereignty and to change course.

The term "Germany stack" is not explained in the paper. What do you mean by this?

It is indeed a problem that it is not explained. As I understand it, this refers to the IT architecture of the federal and state governments with corresponding standards. It is important that the Ministry of Digital Affairs procures IT solutions that match this architecture so that we can move away from isolated solutions. But of course you have to ask the authors of the coalition agreement what they were thinking.

So Deutschland-Stack would just be a hip new word for what was previously called government as a platform, platform strategy or standardization, right?

Yes, but that's sometimes the art of politics, that you have to pour old wine into new bottles. It will simply be crucial to implement this now. And I'm cautiously optimistic about that. Because the chances are now better that the federal states will support it. This is shown by the resolutions of the Digital Ministers' Conference.

(cwo)