The Bavarian State Minister calls for a digital ministry in the federal government.
(Photo: imago images / Political-Moments)
Munich The Bavarian Digital Minister Judith Gerlach (CSU) has called for a digital ministry in the federal government. This must be equipped with a large budget and sufficient skills, she said in an interview with the Handelsblatt: “It has to be padded and not messed up.”
With a kind of “acceleration budget”, such a digital ministry could make financial resources available to other departments in order to advance digital projects. “It is crucial that a digital minister can really act on an equal footing, for example with colleagues in the finance ministry,” said Gerlach.
The SPD, Greens and FDP had announced in their exploratory paper that they wanted to reorganize and bundle competencies in the federal government – but they left it open how that should be structured. Bitkom President Achim Berg and representatives of other digital associations had also spoken out in favor of a digital ministry.
The digital ministry does not have to have a “right of veto, but a right of initiative” in order to initiate projects with other ministries, said CSU Minister Gerlach. “Conceptually, it has to keep everything in view.” The other federal ministries should also have digital staff units, it is always about voting: “Only then are central solutions possible.”
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In addition, coordination with the 16 responsible state ministers must be improved. The joint “G16” committee must agree on meaningful projects with the federal government.
It is impossible to understand why every federal state has developed its own vaccination portal. “That was completely incomprehensible. In such cases, the federal government must provide the basic framework to which the others can dock. “
Little progress in administrations
In the Bundestag election campaign, the topic of digitization once again played an important role for many parties. Experts believe that there has not been any great progress in administration in recent years. The researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems examined 300 representative selected municipalities and summed up: Progress is “only slow”.
According to Gerlach, digitization has recently made progress in Bavaria. “We see ourselves as the state government’s think tank.” For example, an IT citizen hotline with the Ministry of the Interior was created in the event of hacker attacks.
But there were still important tasks to be solved. The digitization of schools has been accelerated because of Corona, “but there is still a lot to be done”. It is less about video conferencing systems than about how schools develop with digital, interactive textbooks. An app can query vocabulary well.
Bavaria will soon present a primary school app that teaches knowledge in a playful way, announced the CSU politician. The aim is to enable students to better assess phenomena such as bullying, hate speech or sexual harassment.
According to Gerlach’s assessment, Germany’s lag behind some countries in terms of digitization is not due to a lack of funds: “There is actually enough money – but we are used to having a circle of chairs for two years. The clock is ticking.”
It is important that the municipality concerned is well involved in digital administration offers such as the Bayern app. Gerlach: “In the state, we must finally get started with the digital transformation, even if our offers are not 150 percent perfect.”
Bavaria relies on the competence of external experts
The lawyer, who lives in Weibersbrunn in the Spessart, moved into the state parliament in 2013 and has headed the Bavarian digital ministry with 123 employees and a budget of 100 million euros for almost three years. It sometimes takes persuasiveness to push ideas through internally, said the 35-year-old, and she also uses the expertise of external experts.
One of their initiatives is the digital company account, which other federal states have now also introduced. You register here with your tax number. “Citizens often only have to deal with the administration every year, for example when they need a new identity card. However, companies have an average of up to 200 contacts with authorities a year, ”said Gerlach. Therefore, digital services are particularly important here. Together with North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria wants to implement a corporate platform for all applications throughout Germany.
The high-tech agenda research of the Bavarian state government was very important, summarized Gerlach, now artificial intelligence (AI) has to be implemented in companies and their products.
On her Bavarian “summer tour” she discovered that some medium-sized companies hardly have a vision for the digital age. A regional center for the “KI-Transfer-plus” model was established in Regensburg, in which the agricultural machinery manufacturer Horsch, the 3D printer FIT AG and emz-Hanauer GmbH (waste container) are involved.
In the conversation, Gerlach finally revealed himself to be a fan of a “development culture” in which you could try something out: “That is better than the model of a culture of mistakes, at least that applies to the state.”
More: Tech associations are missing a digital ministry