Today the world stands at a critical juncture. The risks from global fragmentation, economic and social imbalances as well as increasing environmental degradation are real. Europe, and Germany in particular, has the potential to leverage its leading capabilities in research, technological innovation as well its social market economy to address these challenges. We can push towards a world that reflects our values of economic and environmental sustainability as well as social participation and digital inclusion. We need to respect security, privacy and trust and employ “green by design” principles. To achieve this vision in a digitalized and interconnected world, Information Technology will play a critical role.
This VDE ITG Impulse Paper will explore how Information Technology innovation can help to achieve and drive economic, societal and environmental sustainability for the next decade anchored in the purpose of helping the world to collaborate. Information Technology has become general purpose with enabling impact across all sectors of the economy, it is one of the fundamental pillars of our daily life and a key driver of economic growth. To build an Information Technology Vision, we develop, describe and discuss a taxonomy of the Information Technology Foundational Technology Enablers, System as well as Services and Applications, mapping them against Ecosystem Value. Sustainability, Security as well as Cognition and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be seen as comprehensive drivers for design and value.
Key prerequisites to live up to our Information Technology Vision 2035 will be awareness of the drivers and technology options by key stakeholders across sectors and in our society at large. This includes to find ways to enthuse, educate and recruit young talent within and outside Germany as well as appropriate vehicles of cooperation and public private partnerships. Public funding of research in key Information Technology domains continues to be a key enabler in terms of both building a strong research foundation as well as training the next generation of Information Technology specialists. Standardization and openness will be an essential factor of success also in 2035 for reasons of economy of scale as well as interoperability. A fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory patent regime will be needed to allow the Information Technology industry and practicing entities to recapture some of their value and to respect the legitimate interests of both patent holders and implementers. Complex regulatory frameworks need to be simplified to foster growth, innovation and scalability for German and European companies and ecosystems.
Germany and Europe have a lead position in advanced connectivity and communication networks which needs to be leveraged also in the interest of technology sovereignty.
Our ambition needs to be to foster a vibrant Information Technology ecosystem including academia, service providers and industry (large corporates, SMEs and start-ups) to strengthen the full value chain from research to products and services. We need to build on our strengths and drive the accelerated build-out of Information Technology infrastructure in the next several years. This will be the steppingstone to maximize Information Technology’s positive impact in the 2030s.
