A digital package for Bavaria and the CSU – Bavaria

As a precaution, the spokesman for Digital Minister Judith Gerlach (CSU) strolls through the press area, here and there with the hint that his boss is about to come up with a massive project. And knowing that the corona situation will degrade this to a side note for the time being. Recently, at the end of the cabinet meeting on the budget: Prime Minister Markus Söder brought the finance, environment and culture ministers as well as the digital minister with him. It is initially about the pandemic, Söder proclaims the “week of truth”. Then it’s the turn of the department heads, at some point Gerlach too. She says she still has to “highlight” her digital package: She wants to look at processes from the start and, in the end, citizens should notice in the administration, for example, that “digitization works”.

Two things are noticeable that day. That Gerlach is ahead of the budget, although her own is measly compared to the usual school billions, for example. And that Söder – contrary to his nature with such appointments – does not announce the news in advance and lets his ministers speak about the remains afterwards. Gerlach is allowed to explain everything himself. With advances in digitization, it is well known that the state government wants to score points until the state elections in 2023. The fact that many in the CSU want more visible ministers, publicly linked to important issues, is not exactly a secret either.

In any case, the plans read big. Among other things, Bavaria is to get a digital council, a digital agency and an “acceleration budget” for digital projects. What’s it all about? Little more is known than is stated in the cabinet decision, details are currently being worked out. When it comes to Gerlach, one really thinks of the package as a package; not as a bundle of individual measures, but as cogs that interlock. It’s about the “overall product,” she says on the phone a few days later. “During Corona we noticed that we could support the other ministries well.”

We, this is the digital ministry. Qua birth a strange construct: hardly any budget, hardly any clear responsibilities. Gerlach and her people are allowed to have a say wherever it says digitization – but colleagues in other departments don’t have to listen. The Digital Council could change that. Put simply, this inter-ministerial working group, chaired by Gerlach’s House, is supposed to exchange ideas on digitization projects. This should also avoid duplication of work. A monitoring system is intended to monitor the projects and the digital agency to help the state administration with their implementation. Gerlach says that one must above all move away from isolated solutions “where everyone does their own thing”.

In the future, the minister will also be able to support individual projects with her acceleration budget. 16 million euros are earmarked for this – peanuts compared to other funding programs. It is less about the sum, says Gerlach, but how quickly it is available. From this point of view, the budget is intended as a kind of emergency reserve in order to implement smaller measures that go beyond tight budgets more quickly. A “pact” with municipalities and Internet providers is also intended to accelerate the expansion of the digital infrastructure.

“Extremely weak on the chest”

In Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, among others, there are already consultation rounds, similar to the Digital Council now planned in Bavaria. The digital association Bitkom considers such bodies to be fundamentally sensible. Whether this also works in Bavaria depends on how the council is structured, says Lena Flohre, Head of State Politics: “It would be a shame if it were only about an exchange at working level about who started which projects in the last six months Has.” Overall, Flohre rates the digital package as a “further step” in the right direction. The ministry is limited in its possibilities to help shape the digital policy of other departments. It would be expedient to turn a few “institutional screws”.

People in the opposition are more skeptical – and wonder how much substance will ultimately be in the plans. For Helmut Kaltenhauser (FDP) the measures are “extremely weak on the chest”, it would “only create new structures for tasks that the digital ministry should have done long ago”. Kaltenhauser is “a mystery” about specific applications for the acceleration budget. Benjamin Adjei (Greens) points out that the Ministry is still not responsible for some announcements; broadband expansion lies with the Ministry of Finance, for example. In 2018, Söder introduced the digital ministry without considering how it would best work. In any case, the CSU have “completely left behind” digitization in the past.

Despite all the progress, public administration is still considered to be analog and cumbersome. When it comes to digitization, the economy is a long way ahead. That also sticks to the CSU. She cannot even name a culprit on the subject, since she rules the country and has held crucial federal posts for 16 years. Many in the CSU hope that with its own digital ministry, one can still attract attention in the future – especially since there will probably be none in the federal government for the time being. In general, the party is thinking about how the old saying of “laptop and lederhosen” could possibly be reissued. Whatever happens, an open flank on the mega-topic of digitization would be fatal.

Does this mean that the digital ministry may feel that it has been upgraded with the package? The bearer of hope always answers such questions diplomatically. “I see the whole thing primarily as a tailwind for the topic,” says Gerlach. Nevertheless, she would like the new government to have a digital ministry at the federal level. It doesn’t have to be big, “but super powerful”; For example, with a right of initiative to force other ministries into digitization projects if necessary. A superpower that Gerlach has so far lacked.

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