New anger about an old problem: Because of a state government IT project for digitization in school administration that has gone completely out of control for decades, the FDP in the state parliament now wants to clarify the responsibility of Prime Minister Markus Söder. In a so-called interpellation, members of the parliamentary group call for “clarification and evaluation” of the Official School Data (ASD) and Official School Administration (ASV) project launched by the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs in 2005.
An interpellation is a major public inquiry to the state government about matters of particular importance. In this case, it includes 86 questions, which also deal with Söder’s political responsibility during his tenure as Finance Minister, that of his predecessor as Prime Minister, Horst Seehofer, and the then Minister of Education, Ludwig Spaenle (all CSU). The interpellation should be submitted to the state parliament on Friday.
“When you deal with digital projects in the Ministry of Education, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Even in the 2000s, long before the Mebis chaos in distance learning, a central software project for school administration crashed into the wall: ASD/ASV. Until today it has not been completed, although this should originally have been the case in 2011,” said the education policy spokesman for the parliamentary group, Matthias Fischbach, of the German Press Agency.
The Court of Auditors called for an evaluation
The list of defects goes beyond all dimensions, stressed Fischbach. “In the summer of 2021, the Bavarian Supreme Court of Auditors called for an evaluation of the entire program, not without reason, but because of the blatant mismanagement.” He justifies the extensive inquiry with the lack of willingness to cooperate on the part of the government factions, who are “resisting the screening of the project by all means and brazenly glorifying it as a “successful model”. With the request, a complete clarification including discussion about the consequences should be achieved.
“The state government has a duty to name the responsibilities of the IT million grave by name. The project was originally supposed to cost 11.3 million euros, but according to the state government it is expected to be 272 million euros by 2028,” emphasized the spokesman for finance and budgetary policy of the parliamentary group, Helmut Kaltenhauser. Spaenle and Söder in particular would have to explain themselves, after all, the project got out of hand during their tenure as Ministers of Education and Finance. “We have to learn from the mistakes for future IT projects like the BayernCloud school and finally bring the school administration up to date from the decade before last,” said Fischbach.
Problems exchanging data
So far there is no improvement in sight. Only recently the contract with the external provider for the complicated software had to be extended by two years – because the IT experts at the State Office for Digitization had not understood the program even after four years. “This failed know-how transfer alone costs the taxpayer more than three million euros.”
In 2004, the Supreme Court of Auditors (ORH) found that school administration data could only be exchanged between schools, school supervisory authorities and the Ministry of Education at great expense. The state parliament then commissioned the government to create an overarching communication concept – which, according to the ORH, the state parliament also hoped would lead to staff savings.
Last year, however, the ORH complained that important project goals had not yet been achieved. Both because of the cost explosion and because of the immense duration of 23 years, the ORH spoke of significant deficiencies in project management. For example, relevant regulations and guidelines were not observed and goals – such as storing current data centrally and using uniform software – were abandoned.