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Best of LinkedIn: Smart Country Convention 2025 · Best of LinkedIn: Digital Transformation & Tech

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the deep dive.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Today, we're tackling one of Europe's biggest public sector tech events, the Smart Country Convention, twenty twenty five, SC con.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: We've sifted through the key executive insights shared on LinkedIn.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Now, this deep dive is provided by Thomas Algeyer and Frennus, based on the most relevant posts on LinkedIn about Smart Country Convention, twenty twenty five.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Frennus is a B to B market research company working with enterprises to optimize their campaigns with account and executive insights far beyond
• 0:28
  Speaker 0: AI.
• 0:28
  Speaker 0: And the scale of SCCon this year was, well, huge.
• 0:31
  Speaker 0: Lorenzo Carriwala and Lange Olsak mentioned over twenty-three thousand people, maybe eight hundred speakers, something like a thousand sessions.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a real fire hose of information.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: So our mission here is to filter that down, find the most actionable trends for you if you're working in tech and digital transformation.
• 0:47
  Speaker 0: Exactly.
• 0:48
  Speaker 0: And, you know, the big shift, the feeling you got from the sources like Gabriel Becker was that the conversation has really moved on.
• 0:53
  Speaker 0: It's not about talking about the digital future anymore.
• 0:55
  Speaker 0: Right.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: It's about doing it.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: implementing solutions that are ready to go, production ready.
• 1:00
  Speaker 0: So the central theme wasn't if we modernize, it was much more
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: how.
• 1:05
  Speaker 0: How do we actually achieve digital sovereignty and deliver results you can measure?
• 1:09
  Speaker 0: That's really the core change we need to unpack.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's get into it.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Starting with what?
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Anki Domscheitberg flagged as maybe the biggest theme, even more than AI.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Digital sovereignty.
• 1:22
  Speaker 0: Yeah, absolutely central.
• 1:23
  Speaker 0: And it's clearly more than just a label now or just about where your cloud servers are.
• 1:28
  Speaker 0: It's really an operating model.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: An operating model.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Well,
• 1:31
  Speaker 0: it's operational, but it's also deeply political.
• 1:34
  Speaker 0: Joshua Roach put it really well.
• 1:36
  Speaker 0: He called sovereignty this huge, non-delegable responsibility.
• 1:40
  Speaker 0: It's about securing your ability to operate, protecting critical stuff.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: And that covers everything.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Cloud, data, how you buy things.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Pretty
• 1:47
  Speaker 0: much.
• 1:47
  Speaker 0: Infrastructure, data protection, procurement strategies, the works, it's foundational.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: And the market seems to be stepping up.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: We saw actual sovereign infrastructure ready to go.
• 1:56
  Speaker 0: Definitely.
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  Speaker 0: You had leaders like Stackit, part of Schwartz Digits, Bernd Wagner and Hendrik Haber were talking about this, and also T-Cloud.
• 2:04
  Speaker 0: Lars Neumann highlighted their role.
• 2:07
  Speaker 0: They're positioning themselves as, you know, the go-to providers for secure sovereign cloud.
• 2:12
  Speaker 0: Even
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  Speaker 1: for really sensitive data.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Classified stuff.
• 2:15
  Speaker 0: That's what they're claiming.
• 2:16
  Speaker 0: Yeah.
• 2:16
  Speaker 0: Yeah.
• 2:16
  Speaker 0: Handling those highly sensitive and even classified environments.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: And it's not just one company doing it all alone, is it?
• 2:23
  Speaker 0: No.
• 2:24
  Speaker 0: And that's key.
• 2:24
  Speaker 0: It's collaborative.
• 2:25
  Speaker 0: Claudia Alzdorf mentioned how Stackage Force Digits are working with partners like Deloitte, Strategy and Accenture, Maybourne Wolf, GMBH.
• 2:33
  Speaker 0: They're building this.
• 2:35
  Speaker 0: ecosystem of trust, really.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: An ecosystem.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: That makes sense for something this complex.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: But, okay, let's bring in a bit of a critical perspective here.
• 2:43
  Speaker 0: You mean make bearings post.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was pretty sharp.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: He pointed out this absurdity, thirty-four sessions talking about digital sovereignty.
• 2:51
  Speaker 0: While the actual SCCon website was running on Microsoft Cloud in the US.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of highlights the gap, doesn't it?
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: He argued the German infrastructure, Mittwald, Hetzner, Ionosis, it's there, it exists.
• 3:04
  Speaker 0: But the will to use it is sometimes lacking.
• 3:07
  Speaker 0: That's his point.
• 3:08
  Speaker 0: It drives home that this isn't always a technology problem.
• 3:11
  Speaker 0: It's often a decision-making problem.
• 3:13
  Speaker 0: Organizational inertia, maybe.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: So, if the tech is often there, what's the enabler?
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: How do you actually achieve that sovereignty in practice?
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: The sources kept coming back to one thing.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Open
• 3:23
  Speaker 0: source.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:24
  Speaker 0: It came up again and again.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Why open source specifically?
• 3:27
  Speaker 0: Because it gives you transparency and control.
• 3:30
  Speaker 0: You can see the code, you can modify it, you're not locked into a proprietary black box.
• 3:34
  Speaker 0: We saw real examples too.
• 3:35
  Speaker 0: Like Dirk Schroeder, the minister up in Schleswig Holstein, he detailed their actual operational shift moving to Lieberoffice using Thunderbird Open Exchange.
• 3:45
  Speaker 0: They're even prepping Linux as their base OS.
• 3:47
  Speaker 0: Wow,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: that's a serious commitment.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: That's not just tinkering.
• 3:51
  Speaker 0: Not at all.
• 3:51
  Speaker 0: Yeah.
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  Speaker 0: And it filters down to the tools teams use daily.
• 3:54
  Speaker 0: Berth Lendaval talked about OpenProject and xWiki.
• 3:57
  Speaker 0: Right,
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  Speaker 1: as sovereign alternatives to things like JIRA or Confluence.
• 4:01
  Speaker 0: Exactly.
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  Speaker 0: They're part of this OpenDesk initiative.
• 4:03
  Speaker 0: Because the source code is open, you maintain data sovereignty, you know what's happening.
• 4:08
  Speaker 0: But there's a caveat.
• 4:09
  Speaker 0: Okay.
• 4:09
  Speaker 0: Rolf Lufke's raised a crucial warning.
• 4:11
  Speaker 0: We need standardization.
• 4:14
  Speaker 0: Common standards.
• 4:15
  Speaker 0: Shared governance, especially across different levels of government.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Otherwise... Yeah, you end up with lots of tiny incompatible sovereign islands.
• 4:22
  Speaker 0: Precisely.
• 4:23
  Speaker 0: Fragmentation instead of a unified approach.
• 4:26
  Speaker 0: That's the risk.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, so Sovereignty is the bedrock, the operating system.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the engine now.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: AI, it was everywhere at SCCon, but the conversation felt different this year.
• 4:36
  Speaker 0: It definitely matured.
• 4:38
  Speaker 0: As Dr.
• 4:38
  Speaker 0: Oliver Heidinger said, AI is a central motor for transformation, no doubt.
• 4:43
  Speaker 0: But we're past.
• 4:43
  Speaker 0: the generic.
• 4:44
  Speaker 0: AI is the future talk.
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  Speaker 0: The focus now is much more on secure, responsible, effective implementation.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Getting specific about the value.
• 4:54
  Speaker 0: Yeah, and moving towards what some are calling agentic AI.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Agentic AI.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: What's that exactly?
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Think
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  Speaker 0: AI that doesn't just answer questions, but can actually do things.
• 5:03
  Speaker 0: Act autonomously on tasks to achieve goals.
• 5:06
  Speaker 0: That scene is the next step for real acceleration.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Acceleration in government processes.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:11
  Speaker 0: Dr.
• 5:11
  Speaker 0: Mary Ann Janek from Guggen Cloud spoke about this.
• 5:15
  Speaker 0: Their message was interesting.
• 5:17
  Speaker 0: AI sovereignty isn't about building walls, it's about having choice.
• 5:20
  Speaker 0: Choice of models, choice of where your data lives.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Responsible use, basically.
• 5:25
  Speaker 0: Responsible use and control.
• 5:27
  Speaker 0: And she really emphasized agentic AI as the key to unlocking all that institutional knowledge that's currently buried, making it usable for employees day to day.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, but usable is one thing.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Is there a tangible benefit?
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Did anyone put numbers on it?
• 5:40
  Speaker 0: Michael Neuber did.
• 5:42
  Speaker 0: He stated that AI, specifically mentioning Google agent space, could potentially save up to one hundred working hours per employee per year.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: A hundred hours.
• 5:51
  Speaker 0: How?
• 5:51
  Speaker 0: By automating those routine repetitive admin tasks that eat up so much time.
• 5:56
  Speaker 0: Processing standard forms, generating common communications, that sort of thing.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: That's actually quite significant if it scales.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Is it theoretical or people doing this?
• 6:04
  Speaker 0: Well, that number might be a projection, but we saw proof of concept speed.
• 6:07
  Speaker 0: Louisa Mayer shared a great example.
• 6:09
  Speaker 0: Oh, yeah.
• 6:10
  Speaker 0: A collaboration between Google and the Federal Employment Agency, the Brindisi Gen Tour for Arbite.
• 6:16
  Speaker 0: They built a working MVP.
• 6:18
  Speaker 0: a minimum viable product for AI-generated image production.
• 6:22
  Speaker 0: And the timeline.
• 6:22
  Speaker 0: Just four weeks.
• 6:24
  Speaker 0: It shows that agile methods can work in the public sector when you bring smart tech and user focus together.
• 6:29
  Speaker 0: Four
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: weeks is impressive for government work.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, speed and efficiency are great, but we need that critical voice again, don't we?
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: The reality check.
• 6:37
  Speaker 0: Absolutely.
• 6:37
  Speaker 0: You're thinking of Dr.
• 6:38
  Speaker 0: Nina Bohm's point.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, her question was sharp.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Are we just using AI as a fancy patch when the whole system needs surgery?
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 6:46
  Speaker 0: Her argument was, Don't just optimize broken processes with AI.
• 6:51
  Speaker 0: You need to fundamentally redesign the underlying administrative workflows first, otherwise you're just making inefficiency faster.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: It's a really important caution.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Don't paper over the cracks.
• 7:01
  Speaker 0: Exactly.
• 7:02
  Speaker 0: And speaking of risks, security was a big focus too.
• 7:05
  Speaker 0: Michael Giesner mentioned T-Systems talking about this a lot.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Using AI to fight AI threats.
• 7:10
  Speaker 0: Essentially, yeah.
• 7:11
  Speaker 0: As AI tools get more powerful for attackers, you need equally sophisticated AI defenses.
• 7:16
  Speaker 0: It's an arms race and security has to underpin all this innovation.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Which brings us neatly to the next big theme, right?
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  Speaker 1: If you have sovereign platforms and secure AI, what's the goal?
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: It has to be about delivering better results, actual outcomes.
• 7:31
  Speaker 0: Exactly.
• 7:31
  Speaker 0: The whole modernization agenda.
• 7:33
  Speaker 0: Minister Carson Wildberger apparently set the tone with a very clear message.
• 7:37
  Speaker 0: Now it's about implementation.
• 7:39
  Speaker 0: Dirk Backolf and Nikolai Bieber echoed that urgency.
• 7:41
  Speaker 0: Implementation.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Implementation.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: But implementation of what?
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: And how do you know if it's working?
• 7:47
  Speaker 0: That's the million dollar question.
• 7:48
  Speaker 0: And Lena Sophie Muller offered a really useful framework.
• 7:51
  Speaker 0: The Virking Strip.
• 7:52
  Speaker 0: or the outcome ladder?
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: The outcome ladder.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Explain that.
• 7:55
  Speaker 0: It's about shifting focus.
• 7:56
  Speaker 0: Stop just counting outputs like we launch fifty new digital services.
• 8:00
  Speaker 0: That's an output.
• 8:01
  Speaker 0: Okay.
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  Speaker 0: Start measuring outcomes or impact.
• 8:04
  Speaker 0: Are citizens actually using those services?
• 8:06
  Speaker 0: Are they satisfied?
• 8:07
  Speaker 0: Is there trust in government increasing because of them?
• 8:09
  Speaker 0: That's the impact you want.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Ah, so it's not.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: did we build it, but did it make a difference to people?
• 8:15
  Speaker 0: Precisely, it reframes the whole mission away from just bureaucratic box-sticking towards actual citizen value.
• 8:23
  Speaker 0: And the need is urgent.
• 8:24
  Speaker 0: How so?
• 8:25
  Speaker 0: Lena Sophie Miller cited data, apparently only fifteen percent of citizens feel public administration currently meets their expectations.
• 8:33
  Speaker 0: Karina Kreitzer, also really hammered this point home, focused on outcomes.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, so to get those outcomes, you need the foundations right.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Where does that start?
• 8:42
  Speaker 0: Rigid to modernization.
• 8:44
  Speaker 0: Christian Fromm called it the essential basis for rethinking how administration works and the key technical piece for that seems to be Newt's.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Newt's national once-only technical system.
• 8:53
  Speaker 0: That's the one.
• 8:54
  Speaker 0: It's the system designed to finally let different government authorities exchange data securely and efficiently so you citizen don't have to provide the same information over and over again.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: The once-only principle.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: We've heard about that for years.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: We
• 9:07
  Speaker 0: have.
• 9:07
  Speaker 0: And it feels like Newt's is the attempt to finally make it real.
• 9:10
  Speaker 0: It's a massive undertaking.
• 9:12
  Speaker 0: Connections are supposed to start happening in twenty twenty six.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: It does feel overdue.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Wasn't there a quote about that?
• 9:16
  Speaker 0: Yeah, Jan Klum brought up the mandate from way back in two thousand one.
• 9:20
  Speaker 0: Data must walk, not citizens.
• 9:24
  Speaker 0: It really highlights how long this implementation journey has been.
• 9:27
  Speaker 0: Newt's is critical to finally deliver on that promise.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: So Newt's helps data flow.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: But how do you stop every agency building its own separate digital thing?
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Avoid those silos.
• 9:39
  Speaker 0: Standardization again.
• 9:41
  Speaker 0: Julian Dierstein made that point.
• 9:42
  Speaker 0: We need to move past silo solutions.
• 9:44
  Speaker 0: And the answer seems to be the Deutschlands stack.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: His Deutschlands stack.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: What is that?
• 9:48
  Speaker 0: Think of it as a national toolkit.
• 9:50
  Speaker 0: Julian Dierstein and Esther Steverding described it as the central ecosystem.
• 9:55
  Speaker 0: It provides reusable building blocks, software components, APIs, standards.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: So agencies can build digital services faster and more consistently?
• 10:02
  Speaker 0: That's the idea.
• 10:03
  Speaker 0: Use these common components instead of reinventing the wheel every time.
• 10:06
  Speaker 0: Speed, efficiency, consistency across federal, state, local levels.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Makes sense.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So what makes this whole modernization push likely to succeed this time?
• 10:16
  Speaker 0: Mattias Oberendorfer laid out three key drivers.
• 10:19
  Speaker 0: One, genuine political will.
• 10:22
  Speaker 0: Two, pressure from the market companies demanding better digital processes.
• 10:26
  Speaker 0: And three, critically, measurability.
• 10:29
  Speaker 0: Ah,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: back to outcomes.
• 10:31
  Speaker 0: Exactly.
• 10:31
  Speaker 0: Setting concrete, measurable goals.
• 10:34
  Speaker 0: They mention things like enabling a business to be founded online within twenty-four hours, or the digital agency.
• 10:39
  Speaker 0: work and stay.
• 10:40
  Speaker 0: Tangible targets make it real.
• 10:42
  Speaker 0: Okay,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: political will, market pressure, measuring outcomes.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: That leads us to the final piece, maybe the most visible part for citizens.
• 10:49
  Speaker 0: Digital identity and the actual services people use.
• 10:51
  Speaker 0: Right, the EUDI
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: wallet, IIDS.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: This is the infrastructure that lets citizens securely interact online yet.
• 10:58
  Speaker 0: It's the key enabler.
• 10:59
  Speaker 0: And we saw how it can combine with other tech for powerful results.
• 11:03
  Speaker 0: Dirk Backofen and Christine Nakfus-Nicolak showed a really interesting example.
• 11:06
  Speaker 0: Which was?
• 11:07
  Speaker 0: A single app that combines the EUDI wallet, your secure digital ID, with AI.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, ID and AI together.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: For what?
• 11:14
  Speaker 0: To streamline a common e-government process.
• 11:17
  Speaker 0: Their example was applying for a birth certificate needed for marriage.
• 11:21
  Speaker 0: The AI helps with the form filling.
• 11:23
  Speaker 0: The wallet provides secure authentication.
• 11:25
  Speaker 0: And it's
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: sovereign.
• 11:26
  Speaker 0: Hosted on the Sovereign T-Cloud, according to them.
• 11:29
  Speaker 0: So you get efficiency from AI, plus trust and security from the digital ID and the sovereign platform.
• 11:35
  Speaker 0: It's that combination.
• 11:36
  Speaker 0: That
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: really could change the user experience.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Less hassle, more trust.
• 11:41
  Speaker 0: That's the goal.
• 11:42
  Speaker 0: And the industry seems ready to build this out.
• 11:44
  Speaker 0: Dr.
• 11:44
  Speaker 0: Dominic Dimle noted the wallet forum's debut showed companies are looking to collaborate.
• 11:50
  Speaker 0: not just compete, to build this whole new digital ID ecosystem.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: It's not just identity though, right?
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Other foundational pieces need to be digital too.
• 11:59
  Speaker 0: Absolutely.
• 12:00
  Speaker 0: Things like payments.
• 12:01
  Speaker 0: Dirk Mullenweg mentioned MasterCard making its debut, signaling the importance of integrated digital payment options.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: It all needs to connect.
• 12:08
  Speaker 0: Yes.
• 12:09
  Speaker 0: Christina Merida Zimmerman really summed it up.
• 12:11
  Speaker 0: You only get those measurable improvements in service quality with true end-to-end digital processes.
• 12:18
  Speaker 0: No more falling back to paper halfway through.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's try and summarize SCCON.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: What's the big picture?
• 12:24
  Speaker 0: The big picture is the shift is real.
• 12:27
  Speaker 0: We're moving definitively into the implementation phase.
• 12:30
  Speaker 0: It's happening now.
• 12:31
  Speaker 0: Driven
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: by what?
• 12:32
  Speaker 0: Driven by practical AI applications, underpinned by a strong demand for digital sovereignty, and enabled by common platforms like the Deutschlandstak and Newt's.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: And the focus is squarely on
• 12:43
  Speaker 0: delivering measurable public value, not just launching tech, but making a tangible difference to citizens and businesses, moving from outputs to outcomes.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: So the technology is maturing, the platforms are emerging, the political will seems to be there, but there's still that lingering question, isn't there, that critique we heard.
• 13:00
  Speaker 0: You mean the feedback from Sweden that Shubnam Elif Kokalo Obrich mentioned about bureaucracy and hierarchy being the real bottlenecks?
• 13:07
  Speaker 0: Yeah.
• 13:07
  Speaker 0: Voices like Zara Usdirk and Dr.
• 13:09
  Speaker 0: Nina Boom can't bring you back to that.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: And Joshua Roach, Christine Nakvesnikolik, framing it as ultimately decisional, not technological.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: The tech and ideas are often ready.
• 13:18
  Speaker 0: But are the organizations ready to adapt?
• 13:21
  Speaker 0: to make the hard choices, to actually use these new tools effectively and break down those internal barriers.
• 13:28
  Speaker 0: That seems to be the crux of
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: it.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: So that leaves a final thought for you, our listeners.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: The convention showed the sovereign tools, the AI accelerators, the platform approaches are increasingly available.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: The question is, how will you navigate?
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: the internal landscape, the decision-making processes to ensure your projects leverage these tools, not just to produce outputs, but to deliver those real tangible outcomes for citizens.
• 13:52
  Speaker 0: That's the challenge ahead, moving beyond the tech to the transformation itself.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this deep dive, new episodes drop every two weeks.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Also check out our other editions on cloud insights, sustainability and green ICT, digital products and services, health tech, defense tech, ICT and tech insights and artificial intelligence.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening and don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your content.