When Thomas Bönig, 60, started his job as head of city computer technology on March 1, 2018, he did it as a crisis manager. Several expert opinions had given the city and its schools a miserable report. Old computers, a jumble of programs and responsibilities, a lot of resentment about Munich’s open source path. Open source is software whose source code can be viewed, modified and usually used free of charge. In order to make the municipal IT fit for the future, a separate department was set up. On June 30, Bönig is leaving this house and moving on to Stuttgart, two years before the end of his term of office.
SZ: You still have a contract in Munich. Did you get homesick for Baden-Württemberg?
Thomas Bönig: I’ve had several offers from industry. The opportunities in Stuttgart are very attractive, the task less political. I see significantly more perspectives there for bringing digitization and IT forward than is the case in Munich at the moment. And in the talks, I noticed very strong support, including in politics.
It sounds as if you would miss them in Munich.
The SPD and the CSU have always understood what digitization is about. They always provide constructive support for IT topics that are important for Munich and the city community. There is sometimes controversy, but always purely factual. I have always found the smaller factions to be consensus- and solution-oriented.
The largest faction is currently missing from the city council, the Greens/Pink List.
I can no longer understand how the Greens position themselves on the subject of IT and digitization, often very one-sided, not very pragmatic and strongly ideological. A necessary IT competence and even a rudimentary understanding of IT seems to be missing, as well as the necessary openness to use IT as an effective tool in administration. The only political focus seems to be open source issues. Often the only thing that counts is: Can we publish the code as open source from Munich? This is not a basis for bringing long-term benefits to the administration and urban society.
The coalition agreement states: “Wherever technically and financially possible, the city relies on open standards and free open source licensed software, thereby avoiding foreseeable manufacturer dependencies.”
I came to Munich to realign IT, and when I took office I also took on digitization. During Corona, a lot had to be done quickly and from scratch, which was an extreme additional burden for many employees. Educational IT has also been our responsibility for a few months. There have been conflicts over how we use our resources. It was necessary to prioritize the issues that helped the city meet the major challenges.
In other words, you consider other projects to be more important than moving away from commercial operating systems or programs.
Open source is also important to me, you can create added value with it if you do it right. Munich made the attempt, but you have to acknowledge that it just didn’t work. If you add everything up, the city invested a three-digit million amount in a project that failed. As a result, it was more expensive, worked significantly worse than other solutions and the risks had to be borne exclusively by the city. Back then, Munich started with partners and ended up standing alone, which says a lot about how unprofessionally the issue was approached overall. However, little seems to have been learned from this.
In principle, the coalition wants to go back to this idea, which the SPD and CSU abandoned in the last term of office.
When it comes to open source, the Greens have a way of thinking and perceiving that is more than difficult. One has to ask oneself whether this is not only intended to pursue purely political or personal ambitions.
Give a practical example.
The city council recently asked the IT department to use open source or the free platform Jitsi for video conferences. However, it is already foreseeable that from a purely technical point of view, Jitsi will not work in the city in the way that has been used to date with the established and known systems.
But a video system that is accessible to all municipalities free of charge and makes you independent of the big IT companies sounds tempting.
In this context you are not dependent on a large IT company, there are many commercial and open source video conferencing systems to which you can switch at any time. A solution for which the city has a high integration effort or has to carry out its own development ties up valuable resources, will lead to slower and poorer implementation and cause high costs without providing any relevant added value.
Finally, a quick look back and forward. How far have you gotten with the major topics of IT technology, digitization and school computers? And where do you see the biggest construction sites for your successor?
Munich IT is now modern and efficient, which was not only proven during the corona pandemic. Here you have to stay on course and not try to rely exclusively on open source. In terms of digitization, Munich is now one of the most advanced municipalities, and significantly more must be invested here instead of diverting scarce resources into less relevant or insignificant politically motivated projects. The biggest construction site for my successor is certainly educational IT, where you have to provide solutions much faster and more consistently that fit the respective needs of the educational institutions.