At the German government's digital summit, Bitkom President Dr Ralf Wintergerst called for Germany to step up the pace of digitalisation. "Digitalisation plays a central role in all major social challenges and ensures that Germany becomes more competitive and innovative," said Wintergerst at the Digital Summit in Jena.
"We can do digitalisation - in fact, we can do it very well. Germany is one of the world's leading nations when it comes to solutions for cyber security or Industry 4.0. Now we have to manage to transfer this success to other areas. We need Germany to step up the pace of digitalisation - especially in administration and schools and in the development and use of new key technologies such as artificial intelligence." This year's Digital Summit is being held under the motto "Digital transformation at the turn of an era. Sustainable. Resilient. Future-orientated.".
Wintergerst praises German government for network expansion
In Jena, Bitkom President Wintergerst highlighted the latest progress in the expansion of mobile and fibre optic networks: "As far as networks are concerned, Germany has worked its way up from 16th to 4th place in the EU comparison between 2018 and 2022. That is an outstanding achievement. The successful network expansion is thanks to the close cooperation between politics and business, as practised at the Digital Summit."
Wintergerst also emphasised the planned investments in semiconductor factories in Magdeburg, Dresden and Ensdorf: "Together with industry, policymakers are developing Germany into a leading semiconductor location, also on a global scale, thus creating the basis for greater digital sovereignty and economic resilience in the event of a crisis. This strengthens our economy, our competitiveness and our performance as a country." Real breakthroughs can also be expected in the digitalisation of the healthcare system after decades of stagnation.
Wintergerst: "The federal government has shown that it really wants to drive digitalisation forward and can pick up the pace. What is successful in the expansion of broadband, the chip industry and the digitalisation of the healthcare system must become the new standard for digital Germany: Ambition in setting goals, speed and consistency in implementation."
Digital funding from the federal government must not stop
According to Wintergerst, the first priority now must be to continue the Digital Pact for Schools beyond May 2024. Secondly, Germany's authorities and town halls must switch their operations from analogue to digital immediately and across the board. And thirdly, Germany must focus its technology funding on the most important key technologies and strive for a leading international position in these areas. This applies to artificial intelligence, quantum computing and semiconductors as basic technologies and to autonomous driving, digital medicine and IT security in the area of application.
"We are at the forefront of research worldwide, but we rarely manage to translate our expertise into products and position ourselves successfully on the global markets," emphasised Wintergerst. For example, AI needs to get out of the universities and research institutes and into the economy and the market. The economy itself is also in demand here, as there is often a wide gap between knowledge and action.
As a representative survey by Bitkom shows, 87% of companies believe that digital technologies are crucial for economic competitiveness, but not even one in three companies want to increase their digital investments.
Wintergerst: "We need a digital Germany that seizes the opportunities of digitalisation in a relaxed and courageous manner in order to overcome the challenges of global competition, climate change, demographics and social cohesion. Germany's greatest risk is the risk of missed opportunities. The Digital Summit is an opportunity summit."
Further information is available at www.bitkom.org.
