Erwin Staudt talks about German Government, Open Source and "Initiative D21"
July 2002
Recently IBM generated considerable interest in the Linux community, and the broader IT sector when they signed an agreement with the German government providing public organizations in Germany with Linux hardware, software and other support. Erwin Staudt, the General Manager of IBM Germany was instrumental in closing this deal. He has been an enthusiastic advocate for moving Germany to an information economy, and for implementing e-Government in Germany and elsewhere. We recently had a chance to talk to Herr Staudt about the meaning of the German Linux deal, and about a public- private IT partnership he established called "Initiative D21" that is spreading through Europe and Russia. Here's what he had to say.
Question: IBM has recently announced that it will provide the German government IBM computer systems based on Linux. Otto Schily, Germany’s Interior Minister has been quoted as saying that the move would help cut costs and improve security in the nation’s computer network. Could you tell us more about the agreement, and why the German government thought it was worthwhile?
H. Staudt: Otto Schily, the German Minister of the Interior said at our press conference in Berlin, that the reason for the agreement was not only the cost savings, though the cost savings of Linux are there. The avoidance of computer "monoculture" was a big issue as well. And the position of the German administration in upcoming negotiations will be much stronger if Germany plays the "Linux card" to remove its dependence on only one operating system, and one software vendor.
Schily also wanted to improve network security. He figured out that there are many viruses which can get into the networks via just one software provider. And he knows that Linux is a very secure and reliable piece of software. So in short, the goals are to stop the dependence on closed standards, to build a very reliable, secure and cheap platform on which public services could be offered in the cities and the counties all around Germany, and to improve the negotiating position of the German government with software vendors.
To implement this agreement, we are providing common reference implementations of the Linux platform, patterns of deployment if you will, so Germans can build on configurations that we've established work well, instead of forcing each of the various locales to re-invent the wheel.
The contract itself consists of four elements. We both agreed that we want to promote Linux as a platform. IBM agreed to provide special terms for both Linux software and hardware components. And perhaps most significantly, we are establishing a portal where any public organization in Germany can get information and their questions answered about Linux. IBM is responsible for running this portal and for providing its content. We also will be answering questions about how to port applications, or interoperate with legacy applications they want to keep.
In many ways, though, this was a political act. The Minister of the Interior takes a dim view of monopolies. He's a Social Democrat, and belongs to the same party as the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder. But he was formerly a member of the more liberal Green Party. He has a strong feeling for openness, for justice and equality, and for giving freedom and competition a chance. And that comes from the gut.
Question: I understand this agreement didn't quite come out of thin air. You earlier initiated a vendor neutral program called "Initiative D21" to move the German industrial economy to an information economy. Could you tell more about Initiative D21, and how it came about?
H. Staudt: Yes, it started when I read some statistics that indicated that Germany is far behind all the major Western nations in the adoption of the Internet. 70% of the schools in the United States had access to the Internet. In Canada it was 85%, in Finland 100%, but in Germany in 1999 it was only 20%. It wasn't difficult to see that this was a problem. So a letter was sent out to the largest 200 companies in Germany, many of whom who also are the largest IT customers, to invite them to help us solve it.
We then founded Initiative D21, a public-private partnership with the objective of accelerating the transformation of Germany from an industrial society to an information society, and to promote economic growth and employment. It is key, we believe, that for this transformation to take place, it must embrace both the rich and the poor, both men and women, in fact all socioeconomic groups.
I was elected the first Chairman of the Initiative. Then we went to Chancellor Schröder, and asked him to be Chairman of our Advisory Board. He agreed, and the former President of the Republic, Roman Herzog, agreed to become our Honorary Chairman. That was two years ago, and we just held our second annual conference in Leipzig. The Minister of the Interior was the keynote speaker, and the conference drew more than a nine hundred people. Representatives from DaimlerChrysler, Allianz Insurance, Siemens Company, BMW Automotive Company and also companies like AOL and Hewlett Packard in Germany plus a number of partners from the political side: the ministries of economy, education and the Internet spokespersons of the political parties in the German Bundestag. In fact, Initiative D21 is the largest private-public partnership in Germany today with more than 300 members.
But it is important to understand that we are not just another industry association trying to sell more PCs. Rather, we are the first public-private partnership which brings the customer and supplier together for the renovation of a society. And we're seeing progress. In 1999, 13 million Germans were online. Today we have 27 million Internet users. And even more importantly, all German schools now have access to the Web.
Question: Could you talk more about the e-Government aspect of D21?
H. Staudt: Yes of course. Two years ago, at our annual conference, Chancellor Schröder introduced several task forces to establish an e- Government in Germany. They were to focus on:
- The future of information society, which focuses on digital opportunities, digital economy, consumer-protection and broadband technology;
- Government as a participant in the information society, health services, and involvement of the public in political processes;
- E-Learning and enabling schools and universities, as well as teachers and pupils in the field of IT;
- Women's issues, including professional opportunities and telework; and
- "Security on the Web" which focuses on the development of a "CERT.de," digital signatures and the standardization of smart cards.
Chancellor Schröder announced that these projects would be implemented by 2005 and he's been actively sharing this German innovation with the rest of the world. Just four weeks after our D21 conference in Germany, the G8 Summit was convened and one of the decisions made was to pursue e-Government, and to also include less developed countries.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin recently came to Berlin to visit Schröder, out of the blue he said, "Schröder, I heard from my people that you have an IT initiative called D21 to bring more women and other minorities into the IT profession, and to create in Germany an information society" Why can’t we do the same in Russia?"
So we got a call from Schröder, and hurried off to a reception where Putin was speaking. Now we're implementing D21 in Russia. My counterpart in Russia is the Russian Minister for Technology, and he sent a ten-person delegation from Russia to the D21 conference, so we know they are very serious about this. Other European countries who have interests in Russia are helping with the Russian initiative as well.
We have similar initiatives underway in Austria and in Switzerland. So this is beginning to mushroom, and it's becoming a pan-Eurasian initiative, not just a German one. It's very exciting to see the government sector market beginning to develop in this way, at a time when some other sectors are sluggish.
Question: What about the other side of this equation? What sort of success has Linux had in Germany in the private sector? How is it regarded there?
H. Staudt: The reasons customers are using Linux in the German private sector in many ways mirror the concerns of the German Interior Ministry. They want to break out of the trap of being dependent on just one software vendor. Microsoft is quite rigid, and they use their market position to play hardball with their customers. Customers and consumers understand that Linux is a very stable, and very highly developed platform. The intrinsic security of Linux is also a factor. And of course, Linux itself is open and free.
Question: Is there anything that you’d like to add about the future role of Linux in Germany?
H. Staudt: I would just like to add this one point. I remember, and perhaps many of your readers remember when Sam Palmisano stated that he wanted all of IBM's servers and software to be ready for Linux, and we decided to spend a $1 billion to make it happen. My point is this: the billion was not spent only for IBM; this was a billion we spent for the free market. Palmisano saw the importance of that, he executed, and now we all are harvesting the fruits of his vision.
Question: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us.
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