Marc Hansen, Luxembourg's Minister Delegate for Digitalisation;
Credit: MinDigital
On Tuesday 8 December 2020, Luxembourg's Minister Delegate for Digitalisation, Marc Hansen, signed the “Berlin Declaration on digital society and value-based digital government” during a ministerial meeting organised in the form of a videoconference by the German Presidency of the Council of European Union.
Chaired by Germany's State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community and Federal Government Commissioner for Information Technology, Markus Richter, and bringing together the EU ministers and state secretaries responsible for digitalisation, this meeting took place within the framework of the High-Level Conference on Value-Based Digital Transformation in Europe.
The Berlin Declaration follows on from the Tallinn Declaration of 2017 and the European eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020 and sets out common principles and objectives for a digital public administration based on democratic values and fundamental rights established in particular in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
During his speech, Minister Marc Hansen noted two essential aspects of the declaration: “This declaration underlines the importance of our European and democratic values and our fundamental rights in the field of the digital transformation of the administration. In addition, for the first time it explicitly introduces the concept of digital sovereignty. We are therefore committed to ensuring that our common values are embodied in adequate measures to guarantee our citizens that their fundamental rights and democratic values are also protected in the digital world”.
The principles of the declaration are in line with those of the Luxembourg government in general and of the Ministry of Digitalisation in particular: respect for fundamental rights and democratic values, social participation and digital inclusion, emancipation of users and development of digital skills, security and confidence in digital interactions with the public administration, digital sovereignty, interoperability and use of innovative technologies in the public sector while respecting a human-centred approach.
Regarding the latter, Luxembourg's Minister Delegate highlighted the latest of the ministry's projects, the GovTech Lab: “The expansion of the state's digital offering is an objective of prime importance to us. This initiative aims to accelerate the development of technological solutions within the state to improve the interaction between authorities and citizens. We aim to make GovTech Lab a platform for exchange between digital needs, new technologies and innovative solutions”.
