“Germany has fallen behind digitally under the traffic light government,” comments Bitkom President Dr. Ralf Wintererst on the new figures. “14th place is the starting position for black-red. Moving up two places every year and positioning in the top third must be the minimum goal for the new federal government.” The first important step has been taken with the introduction of a digital ministry. Wintergerst: “Now bureaucracy must be reduced and digital skills built up, both in the economy and in society. At the same time, the digitalization of public administrations must be massively accelerated. It is not enough for the federal government to do its homework. Around 90 percent of all administrative activities are carried out by the federal states and, above all, the cities and municipalities. The federal government must provide more support and better services, but the federal states, districts and municipalities must also accept them.”
The EU Commission has been collecting comprehensive data on the digitalization of member states since 2014, but has not published a so-called DESI ranking since 2023. DESI stands for “Digital Economy and Society Index”. “This index was internationally recognized as the most important benchmark for the digital progress of EU countries, even if not everyone liked its results,” says Wintergerst about the previous EU DESI. Since 2023, however, the EU has only published rankings on 31 individual indicators – for example, on basic digital skills in society, 5G network coverage or the provision of digital administrative services. Bitkom reviewed this set of EU indicators, eliminated two inconsistencies and then created a new index based on the established EU methodology. According to this, Finland is in first place in the overall ranking, followed by Denmark, the Netherlands, Malta and Sweden. Bringing up the rear, well behind the remaining countries, are Bulgaria, Greece and, far behind, Romania.
For Germany, the rankings in the individual areas are as follows:
- In the area of “Digital transformation of companies”, Germany achieved 8th place. Here, there were slightly faster developments than the EU average, particularly in the areas of the use of artificial intelligence or the cloud. Denmark took first place in this category, followed by Finland and Sweden.
- In terms of the quality of digital infrastructure, Germany is in 9th place – but only 19th in terms of usage. Wintergerst: “99% of households in Germany are covered by 5G. Around 78% have the option of a gigabit connection with at least 1000 Mbps. However, only 6 percent of households have booked such a connection, which is 16 percentage points less than the EU average.”
- In the area of “digital skills”, Germany ranks 15th in the EU comparison. Around 20 percent of Germans have above-average skills in terms of information and communication technologies, meaning they are above average in their ability to use hardware, software or digital applications. This is eight percentage points below the EU average. People in Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden have the best digital skills.
- In terms of the “digitalization of public administration”, Germany is the worst performer compared to the other categories and only ranks 21st out of 27. The EU data shows below-average values for the digitalization of German authorities across almost all indicators. For example, only 38% of forms are pre-filled with data already known to the public administration – the EU average is 71%. At 64%, the use of digital administrative services is also more than ten percentage points below the EU average. Malta takes first place in digital administration, followed by Estonia and Finland.
Wintergerst: “The new EU ranking shows that Germany must increase its efforts to not only keep pace with the other nations in terms of digitalization, but to get ahead. The German government will have been in office for 100 days on Thursday. It now needs a digital policy roadmap that defines a target picture, sets priorities and defines concrete measures.” From Bitkom’s point of view, the focus should not only be on drastically reducing bureaucracy and comprehensively stopping regulation, but also on effectively stimulating investment and reducing energy costs for the energy-intensive digital economy. “The very high electricity costs compared to the rest of the EU are a competitive disadvantage for operators of data centers and networks, and communication services are becoming unnecessarily more expensive,” says Wintergerst.
Digital and media skills also need to be strengthened – from schools to further vocational training. In order to advance the digitalization of public administrations, Bitkom is proposing the abolition of written form requirements by means of a general clause and the legal establishment of the so-called once-only principle. This means that information only has to be provided once to public authorities. “The Bitkom DESI Index shows: Digitization can only succeed if it is understood as a joint task. It is not primarily about winning rankings – it is about a digitally sovereign, efficient and resilient Germany.”
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Graphic: Bitkom
