Digital Leap:
When If Not Now?

Health agen­cies report­ing case sta­tis­tics by fax, schools lack­ing the tech­ni­cal means for online instruc­tion, and retail­ers with­out any dig­i­tal presence—the corona­virus lock­down mer­ci­less­ly exposed dig­i­tal deficits in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors. But it has also released new ener­gy and showed what is pos­si­ble. For instance, the admin­is­tra­tive orga­ni­za­tion with large­ly ana­logue tech­nol­o­gy that man­aged to dig­i­tal­ize its pan­dem­ic-relat­ed ser­vices essen­tial­ly overnight from offices now locat­ed in homes. Or the teach­ers who suc­cess­ful­ly impro­vised their vir­tu­al lessons. And the retail­ers who cre­ative­ly expand­ed their online busi­ness mod­els. The cul­tur­al sec­tor was equal­ly inven­tive. Vir­tu­al tours of muse­ums, livestreams of orches­tra con­certs, and lit­er­a­ture fes­ti­vals on Zoom will almost cer­tain­ly expand acces­si­bil­i­ty to cul­ture on a last­ing basis.

The speed with which solu­tions have been found dur­ing the pan­dem­ic is an impres­sive demon­stra­tion of how high­ly com­plex process­es like dig­i­tal­iza­tion can be accel­er­at­ed with­in very short peri­ods of time. “It seemed unimag­in­able that work­ing and study­ing online would actu­al­ly become stan­dard prac­tice,” says Achim Berg, the pres­i­dent of Bitkom, an asso­ci­a­tion of more than 2,700 Ger­man com­pa­nies in the dig­i­tal econ­o­my. “But now the enor­mous poten­tial of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies can no longer be over­looked.” For him the cri­sis rep­re­sents a turn­ing point in dig­i­tal­iza­tion, and a wake-up call to pur­sue the process with all avail­able means. There can be no turn­ing back to the pre-cri­sis mode, he says. The course is now being set. Depend­ing on the sec­tor, orga­ni­za­tions and com­pa­nies have respond­ed to the need for dig­i­tal­iza­tion in many dif­fer­ent ways.

Trade fairs were affect­ed right from the start of the corona­virus pan­dem­ic. As large-scale events with hun­dreds or thou­sands of par­tic­i­pants, exhi­bi­tions around the globe had to be can­celed or post­poned. Those orga­niz­ers with the abil­i­ty to switch to vir­tu­al plat­forms con­sid­ered them­selves for­tu­nate. One of them is Gamescom, the lead­ing Euro­pean trade fair for com­put­er and video games. Fans and experts gath­er every year in Cologne to catch up on the lat­est devel­op­ments in the field. The fair had already rolled out ini­tial dig­i­tal for­mats in 2019. “That enabled us to reach mil­lions of fans online,” says Tim Endres, the direc­tor of gamescom. “Dig­i­tal­iza­tion had already made enor­mous strides in the trade fair sec­tor before the corona­virus hit,” he adds. The event will take place entire­ly online in late August 2020: “Gamescom 2020 will be the first pure­ly dig­i­tal event run by Koel­n­messe.” Now Endres and his col­leagues are refin­ing their dig­i­tal for­mats and work­ing at full speed on addi­tion­al exhi­bi­tions. “The fact that we didn’t have to start from square one has paid off.”

Over­all, how­ev­er, the effects of the pan­dem­ic on the world­wide exhi­bi­tion and event indus­try have been severe. UFI, the Glob­al Asso­ci­a­tion of the Exhi­bi­tion Indus­try, esti­mates that can­cel­la­tions will lead to loss­es of as much as 134 bil­lion euros in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2020. “But trade fair orga­niz­ers are inven­tive and flex­i­ble. In the future, some for­mats will be more com­pact or spread out over more space in order to meet hygiene requirements—and will be enhanced by dig­i­tal com­po­nents for cus­tomers who can­not be there in per­son on account of trav­el restric­tions,” says Kai Hat­ten­dorf. He is the man­ag­ing direc­tor of the UFI exhi­bi­tion asso­ci­a­tion, based in France, which rep­re­sents the inter­ests of around 800 mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions in eighty-eight coun­tries and regions worldwide.

Endres, too, is con­vinced that “trade fairs have always revolved around per­son­al con­tacts made at event loca­tions. Although we obvi­ous­ly will con­tin­ue to dig­i­tal­ize, online options can­not and should not replace real-life par­tic­i­pa­tion. As soon as real events are pos­si­ble, we will use hybrid formats—wherever appropriate—like a com­bi­na­tion of actu­al exhi­bi­tions and dig­i­tal offerings.”

The need to dig­i­tal­ize appeared lit­er­al­ly overnight. At the start of the corona­virus cri­sis in March 2020, Ger­man admin­is­tra­tive offices put appli­ca­tions for tem­po­rary unem­ploy­ment com­pen­sa­tion and emer­gency relief for com­pa­nies and free­lancers online. The pan­dem­ic showed how impor­tant it is for coun­tries’ admin­is­tra­tive process­es to func­tion dig­i­tal­ly. “Online gov­ern­ment ser­vices are an effec­tive tool for mas­ter­ing the chal­lenges of this cri­sis,” says Ernst Bürg­er. Since late May 2020 he has head­ed the newly insti­tut­ed Dig­i­tal Admin­is­tra­tion depart­ment at Germany’s Fed­er­al Min­istry of the Inte­ri­or, which is charged with accel­er­at­ing the process of digitalization.

Accord­ing to the 2018 Unit­ed Nations E‑Government Devel­op­ment Index, which sur­veys the dig­i­tal­iza­tion sta­tus of all 193 mem­ber states every two years, Ger­many holds rank 10. Swe­den, Fin­land, and France all score above it, and the world leader is Den­mark, which launched a dig­i­tal­iza­tion strat­e­gy back in 2001. Danes can use a per­son­al ID num­ber to do things like apply for social secu­ri­ty or child ben­e­fits, make med­ical appoint­ments, and pay bills online. The top ten coun­tries also include Aus­tralia, which is work­ing on dig­i­tal IDs, and Sin­ga­pore, whose dig­i­tal admin­is­tra­tion process­es are advanced by a gov­ern­ment-spon­sored Smart Nation program.

By the end of 2022, near­ly 600 admin­is­tra­tive ser­vices are expect­ed to be acces­si­ble online in Germany—as pre­scribed by the Online Acces­si­bil­i­ty Act passed in 2017. Stud­ies by the Docu­py report­ing project at the WDR pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion show that in early March 2020, appli­ca­tions for just three admin­is­tra­tive ser­vices could be sub­mit­ted online. Appli­ca­tions for sev­en­teen oth­ers could be filled out online and print­ed, but no sin­gle ser­vice was entire­ly usable online. But that quick­ly changed. As of May 2020, pan­dem­ic-relat­ed ser­vices such as hous­ing ben­e­fits, emer­gency child ben­e­fits, and employ­ee com­pen­sa­tion can now be applied for online. Next in line to be dig­i­tal­ized are appli­ca­tions for unem­ploy­ment com­pen­sa­tion and sub­si­dies for stu­dents and school­child­ren. As Bürg­er notes, “Crises require peo­ple to act quick­ly and deci­sive­ly. The virus forced us to seize the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dig­i­tal­ize. Our agen­da now is ‘Pri­or­i­tize digitalization!’”

Well before the corona­virus broke out, pre­scient teach­ers were post­ing cre­ative ideas for online teach­ing meth­ods on Twit­ter with hash­tags like #twit­ter­lehrerz­im­mer (twit­ter­fac­ulty­lounge) , #WeAreTeach­ers, and #EduGlad­i­a­tors. They had a clear advan­tage when lock­downs were insti­tut­ed world­wide in Feb­ru­ary and March 2020 and schools were affect­ed as well. “The cri­sis has shown that there are incred­i­bly good ways of offer­ing edu­ca­tion online,” says Andreas Schle­ich­er, who heads the Direc­torate of Edu­ca­tion and Skills at the Orga­ni­za­tion for Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (OECD). “They were devel­oped on short notice, and we’ve seen schools make cre­ative  use of the lee­way they’re given.” But inter­na­tion­al com­par­isons reveal dif­fer­ences. Esto­nia, Den­mark, and Fin­land, for exam­ple, were well equipped to offer online instruc­tion because they had been using Web-based tech­nolo­gies in their school sys­tems for years. Ger­many, how­ev­er, strug­gled with inad­e­quate tech­nol­o­gy and slow Inter­net speeds as well as a lack of online les­son plans, not to men­tion teacher train­ing pro­grams for this type of instruc­tion. One rea­son for this might have to do with the high­er aver­age teach­ing loads in Ger­many than in many other coun­tries, which would leave less time for design­ing and devel­op­ing online les­son plans.

“For many schools it was like a crash test. They had to impro­vise and come up with solu­tions on the fly. There was a price to be paid for hav­ing failed to put suf­fi­cient resources into online edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties in the past,” says Christoph Meinel, the direc­tor of the Hasso Plat­tner Insti­tute (HPI), which pro­vides an edu­ca­tion­al plat­form called the HPI Schul-Cloud, fund­ed by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion. It is increas­ing­ly clear that the old sta­tus quo is a thing of the past. “The pan­dem­ic gave a deci­sive boost to dig­i­tal­iza­tion at schools and uni­ver­si­ties,” says Meinel. For his part, Schle­ich­er empha­sizes the future impor­tance of more than just good tech­nol­o­gy and edu­ca­tion­al plat­forms. “Edu­ca­tion and fur­ther train­ing also have to be an inte­gral part of teach­ers’ work­ing envi­ron­ments,” he says. “We can’t expect stu­dents to take a life­long approach to learn­ing if they don’t see their teach­ers doing that as well.”

These com­put­ers can “smell” dan­ger: equipped with real bio­log­i­cal neu­rons, sen­sors in devices from Koniku, a U.S.-based start-up, can detect not only traces of explo­sives but also virus­es in infect­ed indi­vid­u­als. Julia Belaya knows how impor­tant such vision­ary ideas can be in com­bat­ing epi­demics. As the direc­tor of busi­ness devel­op­ment for the health­care divi­sion of the Plug and Play Tech Cen­ter in Cal­i­for­nia, she brings start-ups, investors, and cor­po­ra­tions togeth­er. In the Covid-19 Accel­er­a­tor pro­gram, start-ups like Koniku are work­ing on dig­i­tal solu­tions to the pan­dem­ic. “The corona­virus has enor­mous­ly accel­er­at­ed dig­i­tal­iza­tion in health­care,” she says. “Vir­tu­al med­ical appoint­ments used to be fair­ly rare before the cri­sis, but now they seem almost rou­tine.” Thomas Kostera, a health­care dig­i­tal­iza­tion expert at the Ber­tels­mann Foun­da­tion, is also observ­ing these devel­op­ments. “In Ger­many, but also in coun­tries like France, sup­ply and demand for video appoint­ments have increased marked­ly,” he notes. “In many cases, patients can be seen with­out hav­ing to set foot in the office.”

Belaya is cer­tain that inter­est in areas like tele­health and remote dis­ease mon­i­tor­ing will con­tin­ue to grow after the pan­dem­ic. “Covid-19 has led to greater accep­tance and demand for vir­tu­al inter­ac­tion between doc­tors and patients,” she says. “And the health­care sec­tor will have to adapt to this.” Kostera sin­gles out a key part of the process: “We have to care­ful­ly eval­u­ate the expe­ri­ence that doc­tors, nurs­es, and patients have now gained in this area, and then use it to decide how cur­rent dig­i­tal inno­va­tions can con­tin­ue to be used or also improved.”

Winkel van Sinkel, a retail shop in Ham­burg run by Zelda Czok, is filled with vibrant green vines, suc­cu­lents, and air plants—normally, at any rate. When Czok heard about the immi­nent lock­down in March 2020, she swung into action. “With­in twen­ty-four hours, I devel­oped and imple­ment­ed a way to pro­vide online advice to peo­ple who want to buy plants,” she says. Her approach used tools like video con­fer­ences and mes­sag­ing apps. In addi­tion to stem­ming a loss in sales, she also want­ed to pre­vent her plants from spoil­ing. Czok con­tin­ued to sup­ply her cus­tomers with plants via the PlantSale chan­nel she set up on Insta­gram. It didn’t hurt that she had already been active on Insta­gram and Face­book, with a sub­stan­tial fol­low­ing. “It’s absolute­ly essen­tial to have a good com­mu­ni­ty,” echoes Frank Rehme, the man­ag­ing direc­tor of Mit­tel­stand 4.0‑Kompetenzzentrum Han­del, a sup­port cen­ter for retail­ers in Ger­many seek­ing to digitalize.

As the exam­ple of Winkel van Sinkel shows, small busi­ness­es have ways to build a pres­ence online, for instance by using social media. Other retail­ers, as well as restau­rants, are rely­ing on the power of com­mu­ni­ties to enable rapid online sales and orders—on local shop­ping plat­forms, for exam­ple. Thalia May­er­sche, the leader on Germany’s brick-and-mor­tar book mar­ket, and the Osian­der chain in south­west­ern Ger­many cre­at­ed the “Shop daheim” (shop at home) plat­form to con­nect cus­tomers and retail­ers in all sec­tors. As yet anoth­er exam­ple, it has long been rou­tine prac­tice in many Asian coun­tries to buy prod­ucts such as gro­ceries online. This helped make the exten­sive lock­down in some Chi­nese cities pos­si­ble. The country’s e‑commerce mar­ket is one of the largest in the world. Its sales in 2019 grew by around 20 per­cent to the equiv­a­lent of 1.2 tril­lion US dollars.

Accord­ing to Rehme, retail­ers whose busi­ness mod­els have neglect­ed dig­i­tal­iza­tion have some catch­ing up to do. He esti­mates that around 30 per­cent of Ger­man retail­ers do not even have an inven­to­ry con­trol sys­tem. “By now every­one under­stands how impor­tant it is to have an online pres­ence,” he remarks. What’s impor­tant for dig­i­tal­iza­tion is to “always respond direct­ly to cus­tomer needs, and to be inspir­ing.” Like Zelda Czok. Although most of her cus­tomers have returned to her shop, they still have the option of buy­ing plants online. Czok plans to con­tin­ue devel­op­ing her online strat­e­gy after the virus has passed. She expects to have a Web shop that can han­dle pur­chas­es auto­mat­i­cal­ly. As she explains, “That will give us more time to address the indi­vid­ual wish­es of our customers.”