Commissioner for Digitalisation, 2018–2021

01 · March 2018A bumpy start: flying taxis and data protection

Bär's public reputation as digital commissioner was shaped before she had formally taken office. On 6 March 2018, eight days before her appointment, ZDF presenter Marietta Slomka asked her in the heute journal about Germany's slow broadband. Bär answered with a picture of the future in which, among other things, people might travel by flying taxi.

„Habe ich die Möglichkeit, auch zum Beispiel mit einem Flugtaxi durch die Gegend zu können“

“Do I have the possibility of getting around, for example, by flying taxi”

The remark set off mockery under the hashtag #Flugtaxi. For critics it captured a gap between visionary rhetoric and everyday problems such as rural dead zones and slow connections. Supporters argued that the point had been to talk about the direction of travel, not to dodge the broadband question. The episode has a later footnote: Bavaria subsequently adopted an air-mobility strategy that includes flying taxis, and funding for Advanced Air Mobility now sits in the research ministry Bär has led since 2025. That does not retroactively answer the original question about broadband, which was the substance of the criticism.

On the same day, an interview with Bild caused a second, more substantive controversy. Bär said that Germany had data protection “like in the 18th century”.

„Tatsächlich existiert in Deutschland aber ein Datenschutz wie im 18. Jahrhundert.“

“In fact, though, Germany has data protection like in the 18th century.”

Criticism netzpolitik.org criticised the remark as a repetition of industry talking points against strict data-protection rules and the planned EU ePrivacy regulation. The General Data Protection Regulation was due to apply across the EU from May 2018, so the comment landed in the middle of a live debate. For digital-rights groups it signalled that the new commissioner would treat data protection mainly as an obstacle; for parts of the business community it was a welcome call for a more pragmatic approach to data use. Both readings shaped how her later statements on data were received.

02 · August 2018The Digital Council

One of the structures attached to the new role was the Digitalrat, a Digital Council of ten external experts chaired by Katrin Suder, a former state secretary in the defence ministry. It met for the first time on 22 August 2018. The government's own page presents them as “experts who drive us on”: people from business, academia and practice who were to advise the government and challenge it on the pace of digital change.

Analysis An advisory council of this kind is a soft instrument. It can bring outside perspectives into the Chancellery and lend weight to a coordinator who has no budget of her own, but it has no power to direct ministries. Its influence depended on whether the Chancellor and the ministries took up its recommendations, which makes its effect hard to measure. The council's existence is documented; claims about its concrete impact should be treated with caution.

03 · November 2018Implementation strategy and Digital Cabinet

At a cabinet retreat on 15 November 2018 the government adopted its implementation strategy “Digitalisierung gestalten” (Shaping Digitalisation). The strategy collected the digital projects of all ministries in one document, with fields of action ranging from digital skills and infrastructure to innovation, society and the modern state. It was coordinated by the Chancellery.

According to the government's answer recorded in Bundestag document 19/5707, Bär coordinated the round of state secretaries that prepared the work of the Digital Cabinet and was responsible for communicating the government's digital policy. That description is the most precise official account of her role: a coordinator of the machinery and its public face, not the owner of the individual projects.

04 · June 2020The pandemic and the Corona-Warn-App

The COVID-19 pandemic turned digital government from a strategy topic into an everyday necessity: home schooling, remote work in public administration, and the question of whether the state could deploy digital tools quickly. The most prominent of these was the Corona-Warn-App, developed by SAP and Deutsche Telekom on behalf of the federal government and published by the Robert Koch Institute.

On 16 June 2020 Bär opened the government press conference at which the app was presented, alongside the ministers responsible.

„Es ist eine App, die uns helfen soll, gemeinsam den Kampf gegen die weltweite Pandemie zu führen“

“It is an app that is meant to help us fight the global pandemic together”

Analysis The app is often cited as an example of a government IT project delivered relatively quickly and with an open, privacy-conscious design. Bär's part in it, on the documented record, was presentational and coordinating: she opened the press conference. The technical decisions and the contracts lay with the ministries and agencies involved. Crediting her personally with the app would overstate the record; ignoring her role as the government's digital communicator would understate it.

05 · ThroughoutGames and e-sports

Bär was one of the few senior politicians in Germany who treated computer games as culture and economic sector rather than as a problem. She is long associated with the German Computer Game Award (Deutscher Computerspielpreis), and as commissioner she continued to argue for recognition of e-sports. The theme outlasted her time in the Chancellery: in September 2025 the federal cabinet approved charitable status for e-sports clubs, and responsibility for federal games funding moved into her research ministry. Both are covered on the culture and media and family and youth pages.

06 · 2020–2021A “federal agency” for digital education

In 2020 Bär announced a “Bundeszentrale für digitale Aufklärung”, a federal centre for digital education, modelled in name on long-established federal agencies for civic and health education. The idea responded to a real need: digital literacy, disinformation and online safety were growing concerns, particularly during the pandemic.

Criticism In May 2021 netzpolitik.org asked what had become of the project. Its findings were sobering: there was no new agency, only a feasibility study costing €20,000 paid from existing funds; after ten months the initiative had produced three events and six podcast episodes. The Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) described the name as misleading, since no federal agency in the proper sense had been created. For critics, the episode illustrated a recurring pattern: an ambitious label without the institutional substance behind it.

07 · 2020The digital ministry debate

The limits of the commissioner model fed a broader argument: should Germany have a ministry dedicated to digital affairs, with its own budget and legislative responsibility? In January 2020 Handelsblatt listed Bär among the Union politicians pushing for exactly that. The position was notable because it implicitly acknowledged the weakness of her own office.

The argument was not settled in her term. After the 2021 election, digital infrastructure policy went to a renamed Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport. Only in 2025, under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, was a separate Federal Ministry for Digital and State Modernisation (BMDS) created, led by Karsten Wildberger. Bär herself took over the newly cut Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, which received responsibility for the development of digital technologies but not for digital administration. The government modernisation page traces how those responsibilities are now divided.

08 · 2017–2022The scorecard: OZG and DESI

The two most widely used yardsticks for Germany's digital state during her term were the implementation of the Online Access Act and the European Commission's Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI). Neither flatters the period.

Verified fact The Online Access Act (Onlinezugangsgesetz, OZG) of 2017 obliged the federal government, the states and municipalities to make 575 administrative services available online by the end of 2022. Responsibility for implementing it lay with the Federal Interior Ministry, not with the digital commissioner. On 13 September 2021 the National Regulatory Control Council (NKR), the independent body that reviews the bureaucratic costs of federal legislation, said that the deadline could not be met. It was missed.

Verified fact In DESI 2020 Germany ranked 12th of the EU member states overall, but 21st for digital public services. In DESI 2021 it ranked 11th overall and remained below the EU average for e-government.

Why was digital administration so slow? Part of the answer lies in the way German public services are delivered. Most applications citizens make — registering a car, claiming housing benefit, applying for a parking permit — are handled by municipalities and the Länder, each with their own IT systems and procurement. The OZG tried to solve this through a division of labour, in which one state would develop a service and others would adopt it. Coordination across sixteen states and thousands of municipalities proved slower than the law's timetable assumed. Online forms were also often placed in front of paper-based back offices, so that a service counted as “online” without the underlying process changing.

Analysis These results cannot be laid at the door of one Minister of State; they reflect federalism, fragmented IT, and decisions taken over many years in many ministries and at all levels of government. But they also cannot be separated from the commissioner's role entirely, because her office was created precisely to give the government's digital agenda political drive. The fairest reading is that the commissioner model raised the visibility of digital policy without changing the structures that determined its pace.