It is a truism: Computer technologies and the Internet have changed the world – and they will continue to change it. Almost two out of every three workers in Germany already need to handle computers in the course of their work. This "cultural revolution" is comparable to the invention of the printing press, the Chancellor declared at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in Berlin. A great many of its impacts, however, have not yet been recognised, she continued.
"Anyone who has no access to education will not be able to benefit from prosperity," forecast the Chancellor. A study produced by Bitkom, the German IT association, confirms this. "IT skills are playing an increasingly important part in professional success, even in occupations which have not traditionally had anything to do with technology," the experts note.
Teaching matter and learning materials too are increasingly available in digital form only – obsolete textbooks are becoming rarer. This makes it all the more important to learn how to cope with the digital world as early as possible, the Chancellor stressed. There are still many people today who do not have the skills that future generations will require as a matter of course.
Along with Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, the Chancellor launched the competition, "IT macht Schule". Schools, teachers and pupils can now compete for the title of the IT fittest school in Germany. Entries must be projects to promote the way schools use information technologies.
The effective digital state
Angela Merkel and Bill Gates agreed that applied information technologies can do more than merely make the state and the economic faster and more efficient. In the long term, the inevitable transparency of digital processes will change reality itself: In the health service, for instance, patients, doctors and health insurance schemes have become used to a certain lack of transparency over the years, and have come to terms with this, declared the Chancellor. Today, however, thanks to digital health insurance cards, it has become easy to see if an individual consults several doctors one after another, and who prescribes and invoices how much of what, when and for whom. This is generating healthy competition.
In the case of the so-called e-government, much remains to be done, she continued. The Chancellor admitted that the further development of digital processes is a "thorny issue" in Germany because of the various software solutions adopted at federal, laender and municipal levels. But, she remained optimistic, "that the people will demand access to certain information and that systems will be designed from the point of view of the citizen rather than of the administration. What we need is not theoretical discussion but rapid, practical solutions." Sometimes, she continued, we just need to have the courage to try something out.
Bill Gates advocated that e-government give citizens a choice of a paper form or digital communication with government agencies. Agencies can use incentives and lower prices to make it more attractive for citizens to take the digital option.
Freedom of information
Photo: REGIERUNGonline/Kugler
IT - a dilemma for dictatorsLower costs and hitherto unimagined opportunities – that is one thing. But the importance of modern information technology and the Internet go well beyond this.Digital change has reached the political arena, as the Chancellor pointed out, and this development is not new. The "unbelievable movement for freedom, which now spans the globe, is a product of information technology".
This presents authoritarian regimes with a dilemma. On the one hand, networking and access to worldwide information are an indispensable prerequisite for economic success today. The conflicting objectives of these regimes, which give workers access to global knowledge reserves during working hours, but refuse them the same access in their free time, cannot be upheld in the long term.
In the final analysis, this brought down the communist and socialist systems, declared Angela Merkel. Thus, information technology has already achieved a "major historical victory".
Photo: REGIERUNGonline/Steins
The Chancellor and the software magnate at the Federal ChancelleryEducation is important to Bill Gates, not only in his capacity as an entrepreneur. He met the Chancellor for talks at the Federal Chancellery in the morning, focusing on closer trans-national cooperation between foundations, states and civil society. After the one-to-one meeting, they were joined by Maria Böhmer, the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration, as well as representatives of the major German foundations.Discussions picked up on the outcomes of a congress held last October entitled "Integration through Education in the 21st Century". Bill Gates was able to address the congress by video link. The American multi-millionaire, who was for a long time the richest man in the world, has written over most of his fortune to a charitable foundation. The German government aims to use the capacities and the capital of foundations to a greater extent to integrate migrants.
