Lars Zimmermann: “We’ve built the first nationwide tech ecosystem.”

Mr Zimmermann, the former President of the German Parliament, Norbert Lammert, has said that you are one of the most innovative minds we have in Germany at the nexus between technology, politics and societal change. That’s high praise ...

Lars Zimmermann: Norbert Lammert is a very kind person (laughs). I was delighted by that, but I’m sure that there are plenty of other smart people out there working on the same topic.

With digitalising public administration? What draws you to it?

The fact that it’s basically Mission Impossible. I’ve always been that way with things other people have said won’t work. Once I’m in, I’m all in.

But that can’t surely be all ...

It’s anything but. I always look at the big picture. How technologically capable should a nation state be? And how important are technological capabilities for the influence of states and the survival of democracies? These aspects are much more important than when we’ll have digital driving licences.

How do you and GovTech specifically go about answering those questions?

We’re driven by the idea that the state and public administration can only modernise and digitalise if they leverage the tech scene, and we are building—buzzword incoming—an ecosystem to this end. Our first pillar is a the ecosystem into which we have integrated just under 150 companies and organisations—from start-ups to IT service providers like Bechtle, but also the federal government states and ministries—over the past three years.

Got it. Ecosystem, pillar one. What else?

The second pillar is developing products for the government, states and ministries and ensuring that they are subsequently used by others. The third pillar is promoting platform-based software development. This triad of ecosystem, solutions and platforms is what makes us stand out. 

While we are on the topic of buzzwords, what is your view on artificial intelligence?

AI is one of the most critical future technologies influencing a host of policy areas, and we want to do our bit to ensure that Germany is ahead of the curve. But to do that, we need to change. Our tendency is to look back and try and digitalise the past instead of thinking about what we can do to ensure we are at the cutting edge in a few years’ time.

When you look a few years into the future, how will AI have impacted administration?

Artificial intelligence will completely change administration and our nation as a whole. We will be increasingly using software, efficiency will be much improved and there will be less need for staff. I call it Government as a Service or the Agentic State.

Are we already headed down that path?

No, because we believe all we are doing is simply making existing institutions a little more digital and that’s the wrong thing to do. We actually need a complete rethink and focus on software-based administration. How many people do we still need and what kind of qualifications should they be getting? In my opinion, we’ll still need a lot of people, they’ll just need to be trained in a completely different way.

An intriguing peek into the future, but let’s return to the present. You’re working on a cloud project with the German Federal Pension Fund ...

We are demonstrating the added value cloud solutions—tailored to statutory requirements and other specific needs—can bring in our living lab. We’ve got all the providers on board—from Google and AWS to StackIT, Ionos, and OHV from France—and are developing specific solutions that other administrative bodies will be able to use.

When it comes to the cloud, the discussion quickly turns to digital sovereignty. What’s your opinion on the debate?

It can sometimes be completely irrational and that’s driven by the fear that someone somewhere will cut us off and there won’t be any more updates, etc. If that happens, we’ll have far bigger problems to deal with than ensuring primary schools cloud access. Of course, that’s maybe a bit dramatic, but if we can show that it works, it’ll make it much easier for everyone to use, but that requires our politicians to take decisive action. If it were up to me, I would roll out the cloud to the federal government much faster through large-scale tenders.

That’s why we now have a digital ministry.

I was opposed to a digital ministry for quite a long time, firstly because I was against siloing digitalisation and secondly because Denmark—one of the world’s most digitally advanced democracy—got to where it is today without one.  I changed my mind because a federal system needs a central hub and a strong individual to keep the topic on the cabinet’s agenda. 

That alone won’t make the difference, will it?

No. At the end of the day, what’s important is what expertise the ministry has and if it can use it effectively. Personally speaking, I was hoping for something a bit more radical than a standard set up with departments you’d typically find in other ministries, but when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter. They just have to perform better.

You often talk about a ministry’s muscle. How strong does our digitalisation muscle need to be?

Far stronger than it is right now. From the federal government down to the 11,000 municipalities, there simply isn’t enough power. If the municipalities don’t digitalise, then my parents, for example, won’t really notice that their country has. At the very highest level, we need to see some consolidation. There are just too many organisations and institutions, and I include our own in that. Strength also comes from budgets. Money isn’t everything, but it is important and it comes from the right people. We need to involve more people from the world of tech and we need to be willing to make decisions. Germany has fallen behind because we’ve spent so many years being indecisive.

I can't stop thinking about this Government as a Service idea.

What I’m about to say probably won’t go down well with everyone. Imagine there wasn’t a public administration. If we wanted to set one up, would we build an office with traditional registration processes? Probably not. We would develop software that worked automatically, efficiently and proactively. A good example is the Austrian healthcare agency. It communicates with citizens via an app based on a structure with an ever-increasing number of AI agents. The app is just the access point. The process is designed from the perspective of the software. I tell many politicians, don’t look to Estonia, look to Austria. 

Sounds exciting ...

And it’s precisely what we need. Demographic changes mean we won’t be able to replace the people currently working in public administration. The solution is software, IT, cloud and infrastructure that will allow fewer people to work better. I think every administrative process and public service must first be designed in terms of software and infrastructure.

Let’s talk about your recent publication on the Agentic State. Can you tell us more about it?

A state based on AI agents will become reality. This the next step towards Government as a Service and is by no means a distant vision where we are unclear what the benefits will be. In my view, in terms of probable scenarios, one that predicts this kind of state is the most likely. I fear this is a step we don’t want to take, but we have to. And we have to ask ourselves, when we get to that point, do we want to have our own solutions or purchase them from elsewhere.

You said that we need to look to Austria as an example. Where else?

The United Arab Emirates where they are currently rebuilding their justice system with software and infrastructure. That’s good. Really good. And then there’s Canada where they are also making great strides in digitalising their justice system and, closer to home, Ukraine, which is a highly digitalised, tech-loving country. We all know the sad reason behind that, of course.

What conclusions can we draw from that?

Something radical. Not in terms of content, but in the ambition and consistency of the approach Ukraine skipped everything that other countries built up over the last 15 years and is now leading the pack. That takes courage And that’s exactly what the new ministry needs to have.