Digital policy activities in the context of smart networking
since the publication of the Digital Agenda
The digitalization and intelligent networking of Germany in the infrastructure sectors of energy, healthcare, transport, education and administration are of fundamental importance for the country’s future and performance. Intelligent networking makes a significant contribution to mastering important economic and social challenges such as the energy transition, demographic change, lifelong learning, increasing traffic volumes, urbanization and the reduction of bureaucracy. Studies show that smart grids can stimulate growth and create efficiency gains of up to 350 billion euros by 2022. [1.BITKOM-Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (ISI) “Overall economic potential of smart grids in Germany” (2012)]
The pressure on Germany to take action is increasing. The international competition for digitalization is palpable. Accelerating the digital transformation via an “intelligent networking” strategy is a project in the “Digital Economy and Digital Work” strand of the German government’s Digital Agenda. The approach is interlinked with the IT summit process via the “Intelligent Networking” Working Group. In 2012, a draft roadmap for the implementation of smart grids in Germany by 2020 was presented with recommendations for a national smart grid strategy, followed by recommendations for action and basic information.
As a high-level body, the “Intelligent Networking” Working Group is to accompany and advise on the implementation of the “Intelligent Networking” strategy. The aim is to ensure the rapid implementation and further development of the content addressed in the strategy in the sense of a stakeholder peer review.
Reliable and innovation-friendly framework conditions are the basic prerequisite for any progress and market-driven development. These framework conditions must be further developed in an appropriate manner as quickly as possible. Investment decisions and thus the ability to innovate in the areas of intelligent networking are still being held back too much. In recent years, the “Intelligent Networking” Working Group and its expert groups[1 .Mitglieder/Mitwirkende siehe S.88 ff] have developed target images for the year 2020 for the infrastructure areas of energy, health, transport, education and administration and recommendations for achieving them. The target images look to the future and describe the desired state for 2020. The breakdown into five strategic levels (societal level, business level, legal/regulatory level, process level, technical level) allows for a detailed analysis. As part of the stakeholder peer review “Deutschland intelligent vernetzt”, the expert groups from business, science and politics presented their first joint assessment of the status and progress towards achieving these targets. Core issues were critically examined in greater depth in consultation discussions.
In order to achieve the goals of the Digital Agenda for smart networking, the cooperation between policy-makers and the business community must be concrete, specific and swift. The stakeholder peer review provides a sound basis for concerted action across industry and departmental boundaries.
A common understanding, especially between business and politics, in the assessment of opportunities, risks, benefits, costs and necessary framework conditions should help to achieve rapid joint action and the creation of suitable framework conditions.
Since 2015, focus and priority topics have been regularly selected by the expert groups. Several consultations are then held on these topics. The resulting findings have now been consolidated in three reports. These then serve as the basis for in-depth discussions with high-ranking decision-makers from politics and business with the aim of paving the way for implementation of the report’s recommendations.
The process is to be understood as a control loop that supports the annual updating of monitoring and measures.
Stakeholder peer reviews are a special form of policy dialog. Constructive cooperation on an equal footing (peer principle) is intended to obtain a joint picture of the situation in order to develop proposals for accelerating and implementing measures on this basis.
The evaluation in all reports is carried out using the evaluation scheme below. The experts rate the respective status according to its urgency in a traffic light scheme with the categories “critical” (red), “further measures required” (yellow) and “non-critical” (green). The progress of implementation is assessed in the categories “at the beginning”, “advanced” and “completed” and shown below in a Harveyball symbol. Topics with a particularly high level of urgency and an acute need for action are also marked with an exclamation mark.
A target vision for the implementation of smart energy grids by 2020 was formulated at the social level as follows:
“By 2020, the social challenges posed by the transformation of the energy supply will have been overcome. Citizens see themselves as an independent part of the energy grid and are involved in relevant decisions.”
The status assessment was carried out with a view to whether the target vision can be achieved by 2020 from today’s perspective. The implementation assessment, on the other hand, indicates how many of the steps required to achieve the target have already been taken.
The aim is to show ways in which a green status can be achieved by 2020 for satusampels that are currently red or yellow. As an example, the following graphic demonstrates the expert assessment of the current status and progress of intelligent transportation networks as well as the outlook for the years 2017 and 2020 following successful implementation of the recommended measures. The recommendations for action proposed by the experts in this report are intended to ensure that the action phase and the rollout phase for smart grids can be successfully completed by the 2020 target date specified in the recommendations for a smart grid strategy. In some cases, milestones have already been defined in these recommendations for action, which should enable better management of implementation.