Germany is proud to represent one of the leading IT sectors in the world economy.
The Federal Government aims at securing and enhancing our advanced position. The competitiveness of Germany as a producer, as well as that of the country's labor market should be secured and improved through the application of IT, particularly in the fields of machine and plant construction, automobiles and telecommunications. This includes important contributions in the area of provision, safety, education and research in their role as innovation partners of industry. The Government strives to promote those technological developments and processes, which exert a particularly strong leverage on the economy.
It wants to broaden and accelerate the cross-sectional effects of IT for enterprises and public administrations. Maintaining security and reliability of IT itself plays an important part in this endeavour. In cooperation with scientific and economic partners, the German Government formulated an ambitious research and development programme, IT 2020. This will have a duration of at least 10 years so as to be able to better pursue long-term strategies and promising technologies and developments.
Germany considers several areas to possess especially strong opportunities for the economy and at the same time a need for increased research-efforts. These are embedded systems, IT security and reliability, interaction between people and technology, simulated reality, multimedia, grid computing, the internet of things, and printed electronics.
The Federal Government welcomes the participation of foreign partners in these R&D programs. Korea, the world's IT powerhouse, will be especially well placed to play an important part. The bilateral cooperation in IT-related matters has already reached encouraging levels: with Korean help, Digital Media Broadcasting (DMB) was introduced in Germany last year. The Korean Ministry of Home Affairs and Government Administration (MOHAGA) and the German Federal Ministry of the Interior are cooperating in advancing e-government in their respective countries. The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) supports a very promising joint venture between Ewha University and the Fraunhofer Institute for Graphic Design in Germany. But this is just the beginning; many more cooperative projects to the mutual benefit of the respective partners will surely follow.
To explore more opportunities for cooperation will be one of the most promising tasks in the relationship between Germany and Korea.
