Politics and IT Industry Discuss “Digital Economy 202X”

Kiel – The panel discussion with the participation of Dr. Bernd Buchholz, Minister for Economy, Transport, Labor, Technology and Tourism, Lars Müller, 1st Chairman DiWiSH e.V., Dr. Bernhard Rohleder, General Manager of Bitkom e.V. and Martin Lochte-Holtgreven, Managing Director of Consist Software Solutions GmbH and Chairman of the Digital Economy & Digitization Working Group at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Kiel, initially preceded some key notes. In his greeting, Klaus-Hinrich Vater, Vice President of the IHK Schleswig-Holstein, presented the "branch radar", which contains current figures for digital self-assessment of resident companies.

As far as the fields of action listed, such as cloud computing or digital analytics are concerned, all those involved in the forum were aware that there was considerable untapped potential here. Good and secure data are the basis for this, which is why Martin Lochte-Holtgreven emphasized the importance of data governance in companies.

Overall, more courage was required for research and development within the company. It is difficult for every company to constantly question existing business models or, more often, to remove their own experts from day-to-day business in order to develop ideas, everyone agreed. German companies should learn to enter the market more often with a beta product and to further develop this together with the customers, advised Dr. Rohleder.

On the credit side of the most northerly German state, the Bitkom managing director sees, among other things, the very good broadband infrastructure. Here Schleswig-Holstein is much better positioned than many other federal states. Last but not least, the location is attractive because of its two oceans nearby, which should be promoted even more if the Schleswig-Holstein Minister for Economic Affairs is concerned. Because the shortage of skilled workers, which NDR moderator Harriet Heise addressed, is still one of the biggest obstacles to the implementation of digitization projects, even before legal hurdles such as the GDPR.