The Federal Government introduced the cornerstones of their planned „Digital Agenda 2014 – 2017“ yesterday at CeBIT 2014. The ambitious goal is “to make Germany the digital growth capital in Europe in the next four years”.
In charge of the Digital Agenda are the Minister for Economics, Sigmar Gabriel (SPD), the Minister for Infrastructure, Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) and the Minister for the Interior, Thomas de Maizière (CDU). Concrete plans are to be worked out by summer this year. In total, the government parties have agreed on seven areas of activity:
- Digital Infrastructure and Broadband Expansion
- Digital Economy
- Innovative Nation
- Digital Society, Research, Education and Culture
- Security
- Protection and Trust for Society and Industry
- European and International Dimensions of the Digital Agenda
Top priority has been given to broadband expansion. By 2018, blanket coverage of a minimum 50 Mbit/s basic service is planned. The investment for this would stem from industry. Infrastructure Minister Dobrindt had announced at the first meeting of the Net Alliance on the preceding Friday that there would be “flanking measures” to support companies at both the European and national level. How these flanking measures will look in practice is not yet known. In the eyes of eco, the current expansion goal of 50 Mbit/s is merely a first step in the right direction, but is in no way sufficient to make Germany fit for the Gigabit Society. eco also calls for the Federal Government to take a stronger financial involvement themselves in the broadband expansion.
The Minister for the Interior, de Maizière, announced that he wanted to present the first draft of an IT Security law before the end of this year. This would need to consider the questions of how critical infrastructure like the Internet can be protected, in order to preserve the functionality of society. In this context, eco explicitly warns against Germany taking a unilateral approach, which will not contribute to legal clarity and will create multiple unnecessary and beaurocratic regulations. Instead, the Federal Government should rather contribute more intensively to the European process, for example within the EU Cybersecurity Strategy or in the NIS Directive.
Economics Minister Gabriel, meanwhile, has the goal of “expanding the digital infrastructure, accelerating the development of future technologies and supporting the digitalization of classic industry (Industry 4.0)”. The Ministry for Economics wants to place stronger emphasis on the areas IT security and data protection, and in addition, the social effects of Big Data and Cloud Computing should be carefully analyzed.
To what concrete policies this might lead, the coming months and years will show. eco places importance on close dialogue with politics and industry and will actively offer and contribute its Internet and Net-political expertise in decisive contexts.
