Germany’s government is looking to artificial intelligence as a way to strengthen the country’s economy, with Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger arguing at the Digital Summit in Berlin that AI could help deliver an economic comeback. The event focused on AI’s potential to support businesses, particularly through wider adoption in the public sector and administrative services.
Wildberger called for Germany to embrace AI and said the country should avoid falling behind in the international race. He also backed investment in computing capacity and argued for reducing regulatory barriers, including those linked to the EU AI Act. The summit gave little attention to concerns about AI’s significant resource consumption, according to the event report.
The report also said critical perspectives, including those from civil society, were largely confined to side events or absent from the programme. Discussions instead emphasized AI’s future possibilities, while offering limited detail on how potential risks would be managed. Open-source technology, presented as a possible tool for digital sovereignty, received little attention.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that sovereignty means having the power to shape technology, but did not explain how that principle would be applied. He pointed to Germany’s international partnerships, including the Sovereign Technology Alliance with Canada. The report identified the acquisition of German AI start-up Aleph Alpha by Canadian company Cohere as one development associated with the alliance; the companies are expected to strengthen sovereign AI capabilities.
A major focus was the federal administration. Wildberger wants to expand AI use across its operations, with a target for 90 percent of its processes to be supported by AI by 2030. State Secretary Thomas Jarzombek said more than 90 percent of federal agencies should use at least one AI application in production to handle core tasks or ease work in central departments. Those targets come from a new report by the government’s AI task force, which was established in July and is coordinated by Wildberger’s ministry.
The government is also exploring agentic AI systems that can carry out administrative tasks. Jarzombek said such tools are already being used in the federal administration to check whether applications are complete and summarize lengthy documents. The Digital Ministry is developing Spark-KI Workflow, a project intended to help speed up approval procedures.
Officials say the aim is to reduce staff workloads and shorten application processing times. Stephanie Kaiser of DigitalService said AI could also help address an expected staffing shortfall: around 1.5 million public administration employees are forecast to retire by 2035. Kaiser and Philip von Haehling of public-sector consultancy PD are working on an Agentic Agency Framework that sets out a vision for an administration where AI agents handle many tasks independently.
Under that vision, people could contact public services through a single point of access and interact with AI rather than a specialist. AI agents could coordinate across agencies while processing applications, with human staff checking or guiding cases according to their level of risk. The report said the framework is still being developed and that its creators did not explain in detail how the systems would remain technically transparent and controllable.
Sources: netzpolitik.org.