It was the week of the big inaugural speeches by the ministers of the new traffic light government in Parliament and extensive debates on their respective business areas. The striking topic of the coalition agreement of digitization was surprisingly rarely discussed in the plenary hall.
To this end, the members of the new digital committee met behind closed doors to hear reports from the federal government and the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). Since the BSI had to report to the committee members on the current threat situation from the Log4Shell vulnerability, also with regard to the IT infrastructure of the Bundestag, the exclusion of the public at this point may be understandable.
Promised more transparency
In another item on the agenda, however, the federal government only wanted to report on the status of the digitization of the reporting chains between the health authorities and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). A process whose inadequacy has been publicly criticized due to technical obsolescence since the beginning of the corona pandemic. So why shut out the public when the government is keeping Parliament informed of the state of affairs and possible progress? The traffic light had actually promised more transparency for their work.
After all, according to the coalition agreement (PDF), public meetings should become the norm in certain committees and then be streamed in real time. Committee documents and minutes that are not classified as classified information are to be published according to the will of the traffic light. So far, however, there is nothing on the committee’s website about the federal government’s report on the digitization of reporting chains.
Digitized infection reports behind closed doors
c’t therefore asked the committee chairwoman Tabea Rößner (Greens) and found out that the parliamentary managements of the parliamentary groups would be working on a corresponding proposal for an adjustment of the rules of procedure of the Bundestag in order to create more transparency about the work of the committees in the future. In mid-December, the parliamentary group of the left submitted a motion (PDF) to change the rules of procedure, which apparently has not been dealt with to date. The traffic light with the promised transparency does not seem to be in any particular hurry. The passage about the committee meetings can also be found on page 174 of the 178 pages of the contract.
The Federal Ministry of Health, led by Karl Lauterbach (SPD), does not want to provide any information on the status of the digitization of the reporting chains for new infections with the corona virus.
(Image: SPD faction, Susie Knoll)
The government itself apparently wants the digitization of infection reports between the health authorities and the Robert Koch Institute to be dealt with completely behind closed doors. To date, the Federal Press Office has left unanswered a request from c’t as to which ministry actually reported for them in the digital committee.
At the request of c’t, the Ministry of Health responsible for the RKI only confirmed that the Federal Government had been asked about various digital policy issues in the Digitization Committee. One item on the agenda was, among other things, the digitization of the reporting chains. She made the report orally.
The c’t ministry did not want to provide requested information on the current status of digitization in the health authorities. A spokesman for Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) told the magazine that the statements made in the committee were confidential. For the rest, one refers to the documents of the committee, it says in the answer. The ministry spokesman should know exactly that the minutes of such meetings, according to an appendix to the rules of procedure dating from 1975 and last amended in 1987, will only be accessible to the public after the next federal election, i.e. in four years, and only under strict requirements.
Incidentally, Lauterbach’s ministry is untruthful: there is no regulation that would prescribe the confidentiality of statements in all Bundestag committees. We can therefore wait until the traffic light in terms of transparency turns yellow or even green at some point.
(yeah)