The Initiative D21 of Germany

Thanks to Dr. Frank Stefan Becker for guiding me to The Initiative D21. As the site of this initiative says it is the Germany's largest public private partnership. More than 400 representatives of enterprises, associations, parties, political institutions and other organizations are currently involved, including board members from companies such as Alcatel, AOL, Cisco Systems, debitel, IBM, Microsoft, Siemens and TNS Emnid. Full list see here.

The shared goal of all those involved is to improve the general conditions necessary to move successfully into the information and knowledge society and to make Germany more internationally competitive and ready for the future.

The Initiative D21 is organized into four subject areas ("steering groups"):

• Education, Qualification and Equality of Opportunity
• eGovernment/ Security and Trust in the Internet
• Information and Communications Technologies in Healthcare
• Growth and Competitiveness, with the focal issues of broadband and the mobile society

Launched in 1999, the Initiative D21 is a registered non-profit association with no commercial interests. It is funded from membership fees and donations and has its head office in Berlin. Its Managing Board consists of 25 members and is chaired by Thomas Ganswindt, a member of Siemens AG's Corporate Executive Committee.

I've browsed the English presentation (PDF 425 KB), unfortunately the main content of the site is German. The initiative looks similar in some aspects to AHE idea. And their experience seems to be very useful, especially from organizational point of view.