‘We must also be prepared to drive change.’
Concrete, transparent, measurable and achieved as a team – this is what Federal Minister for Digital Affairs and patron Karsten Wildberger wants to do differently.
Dr Karsten Wildberger, Federal Minister for Digital and Public Service Transformation, speaks at the Smart Country Convention about the German government's digitalisation strategy. Image: Messe Berlin
Dr Karsten Wildberger is Germany's first Federal Minister for Digital and State Modernisation and, as a political newcomer with extensive experience in the private sector, he is a practitioner. This year, he and his ministry are also patrons of the Smart Country Convention. His keynote speech at SCCON was eagerly awaited. ‘The Smart Country Convention is not just a trade fair, it is a showcase for what is possible when government, local authorities, business, science and society work together,’ said Wildberger, making it clear right from the start that he sees digital transformation as a joint effort and a process – one that he wants to make transparent as Federal Minister.
‘We are a cross-departmental body, we work together with other ministries and want to do our part as a team to make the state fitter for a digital future. SCCON shows us how this can be achieved,’ said Wildberger. His ministry is doing one thing very differently, namely making it transparent in concrete terms: what we have achieved so far and what we are still working on. ‘I don't just want to say what I want and announce things; we also want to contribute to success and make ourselves transparent as a ministry.’ He and his team want to make the projects measurable and achieve measurable progress in one or two years – ‘We will show this transparently on the internet. And if something is in the red, we have to see how we can get the traffic light to turn yellow or green,’ said the minister. This was met with loud applause.
Infrastructure, administrative digitisation and digital sovereignty
Wildberger specifically mentioned various topics that he and his ministry want to tackle: Firstly: the modernisation of the state and the modernisation agenda just adopted at the cabinet meeting. ‘This is effectively a contract in which we commit ourselves to important implementation results in order to reduce bureaucracy and costs, make life easier again, improve legislation and make administration more efficient.’ Concrete targets have been set for all these measures, which will also be measured. ‘We are working on it, but it will not be easy. We must also be prepared to drive change, we as a government, as politicians, but also in society,’ said Wildberger.
Another major issue is infrastructure, particularly the acceleration of network expansion, but also the question of how citizens can better accept fibre optic services. Wildberger also described the digitisation of public administration as a ‘tough nut to crack’. Over the past 15 to 20 years, he said, it had not been possible to make the 575 public services available digitally. Centralisation could be one solution. In addition, the specialist procedures behind them would also have to be improved. Pilot projects with AI agents, for example in the approval process for infrastructure services, offered hope in this regard.
The minister described the issue of digital sovereignty as a matter close to his heart. ‘By this I mean that we in Europe not only want and need to become more independent, but also that we want to participate in global growth.’ Whether in clouds, digital platform businesses or now AI, ‘we have not done enough in recent years’. The aim is to put European companies at the forefront. A different approach to regulation is also needed. ‘We must first give them the freedom to develop. Once we have the product, we can regulate it.’ This demand was particularly well received by the audience.