“With the Digital Policy Monitor, we are providing the German government and all those interested in digital policy with a fact-based status report on digital policy,” says Bitkom President Dr. Ralf Wintergerst. “We can already see that the Digital Ministry is making an impact and has already achieved the first projects. Now we need to pick up the pace across all ministries.” With the first independent digital ministry, the best conditions and clear responsibilities have been created to drive digital policy forward. Projects that have already been completed include the introduction of the “overriding public interest” for the expansion of mobile networks.
As the “Digital Policy Monitor” shows, the newly created Ministry for Digital and State Modernization is responsible for 59 of the 212 projects. A further 30 projects are located in the Ministry of Economic Affairs (BMWE) and 26 in the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI). This is the biggest shift compared to the previous legislature, when by far the most digital projects were in the Federal Ministry of the Interior and not in the former Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and Transport. In the last legislative period, the Ministries of Education and Research as well as Economic Affairs and Climate Protection also had more digital topics on their agendas than Volker Wissing’s ministry. “The extremely wide-ranging responsibilities for digital policy have made implementation very difficult in recent years. This has changed with the new Digital Ministry. Nevertheless, digitalization remains a joint task,” emphasizes Wintergerst. Minister Dorothee Bär’s Ministry of Research, Technology and Space is responsible for 20 digital policy projects, as is the Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. In the “Digital Policy Monitor”, Bitkom will regularly review the implementation status of the 212 digital policy projects from the coalition agreement. The projects are examined and classified in terms of their implementation status and their significance for digitalization. Wintergerst: “The Digital Policy Monitor makes political progress measurable.”
In Bitkom’s view, a more ambitious approach is now required for the Digital Pact 2.0 for Germany’s schools, which has already been initiated, and for the introduction of digital identities. There are also measures that are comparatively less complex but can have a major impact. Wintergerst: “The general abolition of the 2,000 or so written form requirements in German law by means of a general clause should be tackled quickly. Our largely analog administration not only grates on the nerves of citizens, it is also a real disadvantage for business locations and a drag on the economy.” The electricity tax relief for particularly energy-intensive data centers and telecommunications networks announced in the coalition agreement should also not be put off any longer. “The German government should continue with the same vigour with which it started,” emphasizes Wintergerst. A first update of the monitor will be published in January 2026.
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Further links
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Graphic: Bitkom
