 Hello. So my name is Mike Ausendorf. I'm a member of the German parliament, the Deutsche Bundestag, and speaker of the green groups for digitization politics. So I'm a member of the committee for digitization and for economy also. Before that, I was working more than 20 years in the IT industry in the open source area. So around New Year's Eve, I've worked at Suselinox as a consultant. At that time, we did a lot of pioneer-style projects with companies and organizations of all sizes, nationally and internationally. At that time, many of those started first steps with Linux and open source technologies. And in 2004, I founded my own company together with some colleagues of the old Susel team. And the whole time, we did consultancy projects around Linux, open source system management. So I'm very used to talk on conferences like these, but usually about topics like system management, monitoring, open source backups, and so on. So now this is the first time I'm coming back to this ecosystem and talking about politics. So this is the headline of the German government's coalition treaty, something like the progress and the subtitle, Alliance for Freedom, Justice, and Sustainability. And that's one of the points that we really are strange. That is advancing digitization by shaping it sustainably. So that's one of the themes we would like to stress overall. So I have four big outlines. So first, I want to talk a little bit about digital infrastructure, then sustainable digitization, digital sovereignty, and circular economy. This is a little bit beyond digitization only, but it's strongly connected. So I think this is an interesting point to talk about. So I do the presentation. And afterwards, we have time for question and answer round and hopefully get into a discussion. OK, so digital infrastructure. Lately when it came to the pandemic situation, we have all learned that good and broad digital infrastructure is essential for the society to work. We've seen that a lot of people worked from home offices. We've also seen, especially in Germany, that most of the schools have still have very poor internet connections. Didn't work very well. So that was one reason to set up a new gigabit strategy which was which was published before the summer break. And this basically covers some points like getting up to new techniques when getting cables into the ground. So the conventional type of getting fiber cables into the ground is very complicated, very deep. And there are more modern techniques which are much faster and easier to to do. But we realize that a lot of regional and local authorities are very conservative and don't like this new techniques, which makes it difficult to get more power and more speed into it. And then one really big point is open access. So that means that cable providers have to open their infrastructure to other service providers, so that they easily can offer services and make it easier for more companies to use the same network instead of putting two or three fiber cables into the same road. So that is one important point that we stress. So and then another point is that we see we have large market players that dominate the market and especially for the Green Party. It was important to change the rules a little bit so that smaller companies, small, medium, business-sized companies have better chances to get into the business. So this is about the real points that we put the focus on. And then, of course, we have a priority for self-supported expansion rather than publicly funded expansion. This seems to work quite well in Germany. So the companies have announced they want to invest around 50 billion euros over the next years into the infrastructure. So that is a very good sign. And well, one word about mobile communications. If you travel by train in Germany or come to more rural areas, you often realize that you have so we call it white spots where you don't have any connection anymore. And of course, we address this. So the goal is to have 100% coverage with fast broadband mobile internet in the whole country. So there's a proverb to say we want to have internet at every milk can so that you can use services like public transport on demand, self-driving cars, and things like automating a farmer that can use AI techniques for automated irrigation, for example. So we really need fast internet everywhere in the country. And so that is a common goal of the German government. So why talk about sustainable digitization? So it's commonly said that digitization is as well not as much as possible as important, but next to important to climate protection because it's two sides of the metal. So the first thing is that digitization is kind of a problem when we look at the energy consumption. So we have 2 to 4% of the global CO2 emissions coming from the IT industry. So of course we have to work on that. We have to reduce the impact caused by the IT industry. And on the other hand, we need to make use of digital innovations to get new models, new business models, new ideas to reduce CO2 emissions overall or in other words to come to a more sustainable and climate neutral society and economy. So we have on the one side a problem and on the other side a big chance. And we have to think both sides together to advance our society into a neutral, CO2 neutral society. So and there are certain things we've put into the coalition treaty. One thing is about the data centers that the government runs by itself. So they have to implement an environment management system until 2025. And the second thing is that we require new data centers to be climate neutral from 27 onwards. So that are some basic things. Why have I put open source software here? Because open source software is efficient by means of resources needed. And of course very sustainable because it can be reused by everybody who has access to it and usually so you publish open source and everybody can use it. So and that's much more efficient than proprietary software because that leads to parallel developments. Everybody puts every propriety software, a producer puts the code into the. Yeah, it's not open and then we have parallel things that gets developed at the same time and you don't get this with open source software. So green coding is one thing that you when you start up coding from the beginning think about energy consumption efficiency. One really important thing and then we have the fifth point here. A sustainable circular economy. I have another slide on that, but especially when we think about digital products and products that you use to access internet like phones, tablets, computers. Most of us have realized that after a certain point they get broken. So it looks like that by design there's some deadline implemented in these devices and there's a new regulation from the EU commission that requires things to be repairable for a longer time. So we address this as well as on the nation level and as well on the European level. And then the last thing here is promotion of digital twins. That is a really interesting point. Our thing we want to have is that of every analog product you get a kind of digital path which includes all information of materials used, information on how to repair a thing. So that will people enable to get their stuff repaired and so that you don't have to throw it away when it's broken. And the other thing is that these digital twins means you have a digital model of your analog product so that you can better develop enhancements and keep all the information needed to repair a product. So this is an overview of this topic. Then we have the big point, digital sovereignty. This has come to focus more and more after the war and the eukaryne has started. Even before politicians who were active in the field of digitisation were aware that that's a big problem or a big issue that we have to care about sovereignty and be able to run at least on a European level our own infrastructure. But since we got the energy supply cut from the east, the argument to look about our data connections to the west, which are at least as vulnerable as gas pipelines, makes it more aware to a broader set of people. So over the last years when I still was working in the IT industry, I realised that a lot of companies and even public organisations started to move part of their software installations to data centres in the United States, which of course is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, there's the data protection. You don't know what they are doing with your data. I think most of you are aware of this because you're coming from the open source ecosystem. But if you then imagine that after the east has cut energy supply from the east side and we imagine, well, I don't hope it will become real, but the Trump administration again after the next elections in the US could lead to another politics there. And then if you imagine a president that will for whatever reason ever cut data supply, or if you have some enemy state that does this using submarines or whatever. So if you really imagine the scenario that the complete data supply to the west is cut, then it comes very clear that we need a European answer for that. And that means we need European open source based infrastructure that can be used here, which will make us completely independent from the western countries or even from China. So that's really a key issue. OK, so what we are doing, we have some open source specific projects, so the sovereign tech fund was introduced last year. The first time we got a budget for this and then the federal budget and the sovereign tech fund is meant to support open source projects, libraries that are commonly used, but where usually no companies are behind it. So to make sure that these essential projects get funded. So that's the intention of the sovereign tech fund. Then another thing we have is a center for digital sovereignty that has a special purpose for the German government, ministries and authorities who are using open source programs projects and want to get sure that they get support for the stuff they are using. So this is a kind of service center for the administration itself, but of course has a big impact on the open source economy because it will make sure that there is support for all the solutions being used in the public administration. And that means that there will be like support or maintenance contracts with companies that provide services for specific open source software. So the next point of course, GaiaX, coming back to what I said at the beginning, this is a program to build a competitive open source based cloud infrastructure framework as a basic layer so that service providers in Europe can set up an infrastructure for not only government, but also public users, companies to get services which are now provided only by the large hyper scalars in the US. So the intention is to have something competitive here in Europe and that is the GaiaX program which is funded with quite some money from the German government, but also from the French government. And I hope that we see more progress with these projects in the near future. So then I've put the point cyber security here. This is a large topic I have a presentation for about this which is alone about 30 minutes. So I don't want to stress it here too much because then it will take another hour to talk about it. But just some words about it. We have a cyber security agenda set up from the Ministry of Internal Affairs which addresses already many of the important things, but I think it's not enough for now. We need to intensify what we do here in this sector and especially in the economy. So the government infrastructure, I think it is on a good way, but if you have a closer look, it's a German economy. So most of the companies in Germany are SMB, small and medium businesses, and they usually don't have the IT stuff to really care about the network. They run as it would be necessary. There's a study of Bitcoin, one of the largest German association of internet companies or IT companies. And they have a study that says that more than 80% of German companies already suffered from threats like ransomware, other kind of attacks with an estimated damage of more than 60 billion dollars, a euro, sorry, basically caused by ransomware. And if you imagine that the ransomware software or similar software is not used only to get money out of the companies, but if it was turned into intentionally get down the infrastructure of broad parts of the German SMB company, so that would have a big, big impact of the reliability of the economy. And I think it's at least as important as military defense. And I really know we have to do more here. We have already some programs in the Ministry of Economy, but we have to put more effort in this field, definitely. So I want to mention it here, but not to go any deeper, because it will take another half an hour. So circular economy, this is really a key for our economy, because we now see that we have big problems with supply change. And of course, raw materials are very rare, at least some of them, and it's clear at a certain point there will be no more. So it's just a question of time for humanity to enter into a circular economy. And the earlier we can do it, the better. And this means we have set up a national circular economy strategy, which starts with points like the right of repair. And of course, the idea is to repair, reuse, reduce and recycle at the end. And circular economy means not only to do recycle stuff when a device is broken, but this means to start the progress when a device is designed. So the idea of cradle to cradle needs to be implemented right from the beginning. So when you start to develop a new product, you should think about what does happen with this device after its lifecycle has ended. So to get most of it again when the product is broken at the end. So the good thing is that the European Union has similar ideas. So it's the new directive about product liability. And there's a program about circular economy action. So this goes all together. And we are looking forward to get steps into this direction. Of course, we know this will take maybe decades until we get to a point where we can say now this is a circular economy, but every step into that direction is really important. So let me conclude. So public policy can provide a framework, but at the end, the society and especially the economy has to act and get us into a circular economy and to a climate neutral economy and we can set the framework. And that is what we are working on. Open source can make a big contribution if we think about digital sovereignty and if we think about circular economy and efficient working all together. So and as we've seen, digitalization requires a whole government approach. It is not just a single field. So digitalization politics is about everything. So this is what I see in our everyday life at the parliament that we have digital discussions in every field. And there are not a lot of people in the parliament with an IT background, but there are some and that is good. And we see that it's good that we are in a steady dialogue with our colleagues in the other politic fields. But I think we have to strange this and get more dialogues with all parts of the government and all parts of the administration. So now it's up to us to put the focus on the implementation. It's almost clear what we have to do. But what I've realized over the last year is that administrations really are kind of slow and it takes a lot of energy to move the course. So it takes some time and we have to do with every day, every day new dialogues, new discussions about the right way. But that's the way how politics work. And so we are working to put a large ship into a new direction slowly and work on that all day. Thanks. All right. Mike, thank you so much. Let's move to the questions over. Mike, I think I fell a bit short in your introduction. So first of all, you are a member of the Bundestag, right? You're a spokesperson for the digital policy and you act as a member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and the Committee on Economic Affairs. So with that, we have the opportunity to ask you quite some questions on this topic. So I invite everyone, if they have questions, to put them forward and I give you the mic. I'm going to say mic to you because we know each other when we're still hanging at tech conferences. I think it's really good to have you here to bring a perspective, I think, on the political side of things. That's, of course, why we invited you. A lot of us here are working on technology and open source and digital sovereignty. And it's really, well, that's becoming more important as you pointed out with the war. So my question kind of is, it's good to see the government is caring more about digital sovereignty. And I appreciate that people like you move from tech to politics to help guide the ship in the right direction. But my question is, what can we do as tech community here to help you kind of help us or help us all basically to move things in the right direction? OK. Thanks, Jos. Well, I think there's a lot of, a lot you can do. So one thing is have conferences like this and also engage yourself in other conferences. So there's, for example, the Bits and Boimer today where Frank is. There is a conference on digitization and sustainability organized by like non-governmental organizations, environmental organizations, social organizations. So, and raise your voice. So whenever it comes to discussions, whether it is with your friends or in a more public way, if a new community where you live, conventions or whatever, raise your voice and point people to the things that you find important. Yeah. Allow me to also ask you a question while I move this way. So a bit of news here about, of course, the Nord Stream pipeline. So with the sabotage of that Nord Stream pipeline, we see how vulnerable critical infrastructure is, right? So, but how do we prepare for the scenario that transcontinental internet cables might be sabotaged? Yes, I've mentioned that point in my talk. So that is really a threat. And the first thing is I think we can't really protect the lines by military measures. It's just too long. So the conclusion is we have to think about what do we do if those lines get cut? And it's not only the lines. Russia has proved that they are able to shoot down satellites as well. So that's not the alternative. And I heard some colleagues say, well, we just have to lay more lines and we have to send up more satellites. I think that is not the solution. That's a horse race. We can't win. So we have to prepare in a way that we get regionally independent. And by regional, I mean European, because I think on a nation level, that's not suitable. And I think we have to leverage the synergies we can do with our European partners. So GAIA-X and other projects are the way. So we have to set up our own infrastructure and to be able to run everything here with our resources in Europe. All right, thank you. Thank you for your talk and your good overview of different topics. And yeah, I got a couple of questions. Let me start with also the cyber security things. One of the things happening were that the German intelligence services were also hoarding this zero-day exploits for their own software or weapons or something. And this, of course, is contrary to digital sovereignty and also especially to protect people and companies. Did something happen in this regard? We have addressed this in the Coalition Treaty. So there were some interesting negotiations. To be more general, if you look what the press says, usually the press says that Greens and Liberals kind of counterparts. But if you come to the field of digital rights, we fight together. So we have very same ideas. And one thing is that we have put into the Coalition Treaty that public authorities have to work together with software producers if they find a vulnerability in the software. So they have to report it. And we have set the right of secure communications in the Coalition Treaty. So that means things like chat control is not part of the treaty. And we will do everything to protect secure and private communications. Is this also the policy on the EU level? No, it's not, as you probably know. There's a discussion on the EU level to allow what they call chat control. And the difficult thing is that they argue it's to protect children against pornography and violence. And of course, that's a strong argument. And the bad thing is that even people here in the German parliament who want to have more surveillance, they argue the same way. And they frame it in a way that they say, if you are not in favor of more control, of chat control, then you work together with those criminals doing child pornography. That's a very bad argument. But we stand together and say, there are better ways to defend especially children and other vulnerable groups against criminality, abuse, and stuff like that. So but this is a discussion that takes place. So the EU wants to have more control. And the Ministry of Internal Affairs also says some things here in Germany. But we, the Greens, and the Liberals tend against this. And we have put the sink in the coalition treaty. So yeah, that's a line of discussion. Bill Gates said that complexity is the enemy. Because it's just, and what you've laid out is multiple dimensions that have all got enormous complexity. And so you look at it go, I don't know what to make of that. And so if you look at the data centers that need to be neutral, environment neutral, well, they're dependent upon suppliers of energy that is not in their control. And so the question I've got is, do you have something that says take cybersecurity? You say, that is a real and present danger that could have this amount of damage in this amount of time. And therefore, its number is a seven. Whereas you said the circular economy is something that would have this amount over 30 years. Therefore, its number is a three. So you can come up with some sort of prioritized list to say, if you could do one and only one, what do you do? Because otherwise, you make tiny progress on lots of fronts. And you don't make the timeline. And is it better? For example, if you could solve the cyber security issue, if you had a magic wand, what would you give up for that? And is there any sense of priority? Because listening to it, I go, so what's your priority? And if you go, we want to do all of them. I go, OK, I don't know if there is any priority. And that's the question is, in your own mind in the policy, is there a priority? Or are you just trying to plug all the holes you can see? Well, that's an interesting question. Because politics, if you have a look at the government as a whole, doesn't work like this. So you have all the different resource. And everybody does this work. And every resort, every minister, his things or her things are the most important ones. And I think you said multi-dimensional is the right way. So we just can't get forward on one track and say, OK, we do the other ones afterwards, because it's always an ongoing process. So I wouldn't say that one thing is much more important than the other thing. They are all important. And I think we don't have the chance to put it in a line and say, well, we put now 100% in cybersecurity. And the next on circular economy doesn't work like this. So we always have to do things in parallel. So this is the last question. Thank you. So in the past, we have frequently seen public IT projects failed due to design decisions. For example, the email, ID wallet, and so on. Have you ever considered to make these public IT projects more transparent in the conceptual phase so more people can have a say in it and the public could partake in the discussion? Like, for example, with the TV Corona app? Yes, the Corona one is, from my perspective, kind of blueprint for successful projects. And one thing we've also put into the coalition treaty is that we want to include NGOs and the civil society more into a politic decision-waste. And that is something we actually strange. We are in good contact with organizations like the Cars Computer Club or Stiftung Neue Verantwortung. And we try to involve them also in IT projects. It's not always easy to implement this together with the ministries because they are kind of reluctant when getting NGOs into decision processes. But it's my approach. And I think it's also necessary if you talk about projects like Data Institute to share data, to have concepts, to anonymize data, to make them usable for research, innovations, and companies. And there we really try to get them into the process as early as possible because I think it's mandatory if we want to have a transparent process and in the end convince people that this is the right way. We have to work together with civil society. But to be honest, in everyday's progress, we see it's always a fight with the ministries to get them really in. But it's a good point, thanks. All right. Mike, thank you so much for talking about this with us and also answering our questions. I think it's interesting times these days. So let's see where it brings us. And we hope to greet you back some day again to talk about this a bit more. I think it deserves more time as well. So thank you for being here. Thanks for the invitation. Thank you.