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Federal budget: Federal government conceals AI spending
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The federal AI task force is intended to make Germany an AI nation by 2030. How Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger wants to finance this and how much the federal government is currently spending on AI remains nebulous.
What remains vague is what strategy the task force is specifically pursuing and exactly how much Wildberger's ambitions will cost. In its results report from the beginning of November, the task force merely paints a vision. When it comes to financing the vision, she is surprisingly cautious. The “target values, key figures and measures” mentioned in the report “neither justify financing decisions nor prejudge current or future budget preparation processes”. In other words: no entitlement to funds is derived from the target values.
The federal government is currently negotiatinghttps://dip.bundestag.de/verfahren/gesetz-%C3%BCber-die-feststellung-des-b...for the year 2027, are in the core budgethttps://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/bundestag-finanz-milliar...over 560 billion euros. Of this, 20.1 billion euros are digital expenditure, according to calculations by the Agora Digital Transformation think tank in collaboration with the Leibniz Center for European Economic Research (ZEW). In addition, there are 4.1 billion euros in digital spending from thehttps://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Web/DE/Themen/Oeffentliche_Finanz...ögen.
5.3 billion for the Digital Ministry
According to today's press release, Wildberger can claim a total of 5.3 billion euros for his house: 1.52 billion euros of this comes from individual plan 24 of the core budget and 3.75 billion euros from the special fund. The minister wants to invest the largest amounts with one billion euros in the digitalization of public administration and around 2.6 billion euros in broadband expansion.
The core budget does not provide any information about how the funds that the federal government and in particular the Digital Minister want to spend on AI are distributed; nor how high they are. Only three of over 80 budget titles in thehttps://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/21/073/2107300.pdf">Individual plan24are clearly identifiable because they contain the keyword AI in the title description. The BMDS did not respond to our question about how the expenses are made up. According to today's press release, the BMDS has 80 million euros available “to promote specific AI applications in administration and business”.
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Puzzle together AI outputs
The ThinkTank analyzed the federal government's digital spending and tried to reconstruct the spending on AI. However, these are “often not sufficiently transparent and detailed”. This is a big problem because: “Parliament and the public can neither understand how much the federal government is investing in AI nor whether the money is effective.”
Still an attempt: In the 2026 core budget alone there are several titles that have a clear AI connection. Here the Agora comes to a total of around 800 million euros. The BMDS would account for 14 percent of AI-related spending; to the Federal Ministry of Research (BMFTR) 72 percent.
"If we evaluate the explanatory items within these titles, there are just under 400 million euros left. Of this, 274 million euros are mixed items, so only around 125 million euros are clearly attributable to AI," notes guest Zepeda. There would also be AI funds in special funds, for example from the High Tech Agenda.
Strategy not clearly visible
The federal government's AI task force recorded a good 440 AI measures in the individual ministries and even found overlaps in content. However, the task force does not mention any amounts, complains Stephanie Gast Zepeda. She demands that the federal government “show AI spending across departments in the budget and publish the inventory with amounts”.
In the draft budget for 2027, the Digital Ministry does not seem to be committing more to AI, as one might expect based on the results report of the AI task force. The largest AI title “Sovereign Data Infrastructure and AI” is falling by around 9 percent, according to guest Zepeda.
However, the expert predicts a significant increase from 10 to 250 million euroshttps://netzpolitik.org/2025/fragen-und- Answeren-das-sondervermoegen-di...ögenfixed, with the title “Digital infrastructure for distributed data processing and AI”. However, it is not the Digital Ministry that manages it, but the Federal Ministry of Economics.
The title plays an important role in the federal government's participation in the European initiativehttps://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/search">ImportantProjects of Common European Interest(IPCEI). In addition, several EU member states are supporting infrastructure projects, among other things.
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The fact that the AI spending by the federal government and BMDS is so confusing may indicate another problem. As guest Zepeda explains, there doesn't seem to be a "statement of the federal IT situation" yet. But that would be necessary in order to coordinate digital goals across the various departments. In any case, the BMDS “according to its own statement does not know the IT assets of the departments”.
The Digital Ministry has used the means ofhttps://bmds.bund.de/themen/digitaler-staat/spendensteuer-it-bund/it...and could control how individual ministries use their IT budget. But the BMDS has so far made little use of it. In summerhttps://netzpolitik.org/2026/bundesrechnungshof-digitalminister-macht-it...the Federal Audit Officethat the BMDS has not yet established clear criteria for deciding which projects money will flow into and which not.
The housekeepers are in their cleanup meetinghttps://background.tagesspiegel.de/digitalisierung-und-ki/briefing/siebe...BMDS requested this, to make up for it, as the Tagesspiegel Background reports (€). Authorities should carefully examine which IT solutions already exist before purchasing new solutions. They also demand that authorities should primarily procure goods via federal platforms. This includes Kipitz. “We suggest a guideline for AI applications: at least 80 percent should run via Kipitz and the Germany stack,” says guest Zepeda.
How effective the instrument ishttps://agoradigital.de/publikationen/vom-veto-zur-steuer-weiterentwi...What can actually be achieved in IT control depends on how the BMDS uses it. However, the Digital Ministry has no say in the Bundeswehr, security authorities and tax administration. They are exempt from the reservation of consent. The largest amount of digital spending in the core budget is therefore excluded from the subject of approval, says Stephanie Gast Zepeda. Because 7.4 billion euros are earmarked for the Bundeswehr.
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