Germany - National Digital Decade strategic roadmap

The German strategic roadmap for the Digital Decade developed by the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport of Germany sets out the strategic goals to be achieved by 2030, monitoring their achievement, and the target paths and key measures have been developed.  

The report uses the data in the Digital Decade Report 2023 on the National Base Value of the Digital Decade Targets, the EU baseline value for Digital Decade Targets in 2023 and the EU target value for 2030. 

49% of people have at least basic digital skills, which is below the EU average of 54%.Germany’s poor performance in this regard hinders the EU’s progress towards the 2030 Digital Decade target of at least 80% of the population having at least basic digital skills, while achieving gender convergence. The level of at least basic digital content creation skills is at 65%, which is also slightly below the EU average of 66%. Moreover, the country scores below the EU average for individuals with above basic digital skills (19% in Germany versus 26% in the EU). 

The Roadmap for Germany consists of 4 chapters:

• Digital Competencies
• Digital Infrastructure
• Digital Transformation of Businesses 
• Digitalisation of Public Services 

Priorities for the development of digital skills

Germany is currently implementing several measures that can help increase the level of basic digital skills. The digitalisation of education is one of the six priority areas of the Germany's Recovery and Resilience Plan. The aim is to ensure more and better digital teaching and learning throughout the different education and training systems.

Measures contributing to the achievement of the target

• Measure 1: State strategy for education in the digital world

• Measure 2: AI Campus

• Measure 3: Alliances for Education III – Four program partners exclusively support digital cultural education projects

• Measure 4: Funding guidelines for cultural education in social transformations

• Measure 5: Digital Pact School

• Measure 6: OER strategy of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

• Measure 7: National continuing education strategy

• Measure 8: Innovation competition INVITE

• Measure 9: Development of the digital networking infrastructure for education: “My educational space”

• Measure 10: Project funding: Long-term monitoring of digital and data-related skills of the German population

• Measure 11: Project funding in the BMBF funding priority “Digitization in the education sector”

• Measure 12: Data literacy toolbox

• Measure 13: Transfer hub data skills

• Measure 14: Data lab

• Measure 15: STEM Action Plan 2.0

• Measure 16: Competence centers for digital and digitally supported teaching in schools and further education

• Measure 17: Cross-border projects in the DigitalPakt School 2019 – 2024

Key challenges to overcome

More targeted investments in formal and vocational education are needed. The availability of digital technologies should be improved in educational institutions, as well as the digital skills of educators.

In addition to the digital equipment of educational facilities is also ensuring adequate technical scientific and educational support is crucial. There is a need for a competencies that enable self-directed and enable self-directed learning. Another challenge is to create the basis for exploiting the potential of the use from AI applications in education taking into account ethical and legal regulations.