New Supervisory Board for the Federal DigitalService: Dr. Julia Borggraefe takes over as chair, Bundestag represented for the first time

Berlin, December 6, 2022
In the course of the reorganization of competencies in the area of digitalization within the Federal Government, the supervisory board of DigitalService as the central digitalization unit of the Federal Government becomes newly staffed. Chairperson will be Dr. Julia Borggraefe from the management consultancy Metaplan, a representative from the business community. Also new to the supervisory board are State Secretary Stefan Schnorr (FDP) for the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMDV), the chairperson of the Digital Affairs Committee in the Bundestag, Tabea Roessner (Buendnis 90/Die Gruenen), and Heike Zirden, responsible for fundamental issues of transformation and digital policy and social dialogue in the Federal Chancellery.

DigitalService enters its third fiscal year as a federally owned limited liability company with a mix of continuity and change on the supervisory board. Remaining in office are Dr. Markus Richter, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community (BMI) and CIO of the Federal Government as deputy chairperson, Dr. Thomas Rieks from the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) as chairperson of the Audit Committee, Prof. Dr. Peter Parycek, Head of the Competence Center Public IT (ÖFIT) at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS), and Julia Kloiber as representative of civil society. She is co-founder and managing director of Superrr Lab and a member of the BMDV's newly established advisory board "Digital Strategy Germany".

Eva Christiansen and Stephanie Kaiser, who moved to an operational role at DigitalService as Chief Product Officer (CPO) in March, have left the board.

The supervisory board, which now has eight members, has equal representation and brings together expertise and perspectives from business, politics, administration, science and civil society.

The new chairperson, Dr. Julia Borggräfe, comes from the business world but also knows administration from the inside. The lawyer has worked at Metaplan since 2022 as an Associate Partner and Co-Managing Director of Metaplan Gesellschaft für Verwaltungsinnovation. Prior to that, she was head of department at the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, where she built up the Digitalization and Working World department as well as the Policy Lab Digital, Work & Society. She succeeds Eva Christiansen, who was Head of the Department for Policy Planning, Innovation and Digital Policy and Strategic IT Steering at the Federal Chancellery until the end of 2021.

The administration's perspective is strengthened by State Secretary Stefan Schnorr from the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport. Before moving to the BMDV at the end of 2021, where his responsibilities as State Secretary include the digital departments "Digital and Data Policy" and "Digital Connectivity" as well as the Central Department, which also deals with issues of administrative digitalization, he was head of the "Digital and Innovation Policy" department at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, now BMWK, from 2015 to 2021.

Tabea Roessner (Buendnis 90/Die Gruenen) is the first elected representative to accompany the work of DigitalService. The digital politician has been a member of the German Bundestag since October 2009 and has chaired the Digital Affairs Committee since December 2021.

Heike Zirden represents the Federal Chancellery, where she has been a group leader in Dept. 6 since March 2022, responsible for fundamental issues of transformation and digital policy and social dialogue. Previously, she established and managed the Digital Labor Society think tank at the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (BMAS).

In September, the leadership of DigitalService was transferred from the Federal Chancellery to the BMI. Unaffected by this, DigitalService remains an independent implementation partner for all federal authorities.

Short biographies of all supervisory board members and representatives are available on the DigitalService website.

Christina Lang, CEO of DigitalService: "Our gratitude goes to the previous responsible persons in the Federal Chancellery as well as to our supervisory board – and here in particular to the departing representatives – who shared our vision of a digital Germany and gave us the opportunity to courageously and quickly build up our DigitalService offering with the necessary freedom. They have thus laid the foundation for our state to break new ground in digitalization."