The project website www.denkwerkstatt-cybersicherheit.de was taken offline at the end of the project. Another project website will be soon be available via this URL. You can access the findings of the "Establishing a Community Dialogue" project at this webpage. The latest information on the follow-up project "Dialogue on Cyber Security", which started in October 2020, is available here.

The challenges associated with the digital transformation and the topic of cyber security in particular can be managed only by an approach that involves all levels of society. With this in mind, the BSI has been working to intensify social dialogue on issues relating to cyber security since 2016, using a participatory, multi-stakeholder approach. This dialogue process, most recently conducted as part of the Establishing a Community Dialogue project, comprises an annual think tank workshop, as well as topic-specific workshops, events and incident-oriented working groups.

The aim of the "Establishing a Community Dialogue" project (January 2018 to December 2019) was to intensify and stabilise the society-wide dialogue on the issue of cyber security with stakeholders from the government, businesses, science, culture & the media, and especially organised society. This project followed seamlessly on from the previous project "Digital Society: Smart & Secure".(SuSi).

Think tank workshop: "Secure Information Society" - April 2018 and February 2019

As part of the dialogue process, the 4th and 5th think tank workshops were held in April 2018 and February 2019. The think tank workshop "Secure Information Society" is the participatory heart of the dialogue process. It provides stakeholders and the BSI with a shared space to discuss current issues, foster an open dialogue and find solutions together. At both think tank workshops, participants worked together to develop strategies for continuing and establishing dialogue. In line with the previous project, a multi-stakeholder approach was pursued, reflecting the society-wide discourse that needs to happen.

Core group work results

In addition, between summer 2018 and November 2019, 15 experts from the fields of government, business, science, culture and media, as well as organised society, formed a core group, which convened at various workshops (June and September 2018) and meetings to work on three issues:

• Result 1: Establishing a community dialogue
  The stakeholders developed a model for how the multi-stakeholder dialogue initiated by the BSI could be intensified and stabilised in future. This model includes the annual think tank workshop as its essential content hub. This process will now be implemented in a follow-up project over a longer period of time (up to five years), enabling work to be completed in result-oriented models known as "workstreams".

• Result 2: Mapping actors in civil society
  Building on research findings and in-depth interviews, this mapping provides a clear picture of the civil society actors in the field of cyber security, along with their key activities, objectives and networking structures.

• Result 3: Networking day on knowledge transfer
  An event was planned and held in Berlin on 9 September 2019 with the aim of improving networking among the actors in the fields of knowledge transfer and cyber security. This event established synergies and illustrated the need for the creation of information materials.  

These findings were presented in November 2019 during a project completion event at the BSI, which was attended by external stakeholders. The "Establishing a Community Dialogue" project, initiated and commissioned by the BSI, was carried out by a consortium consisting of the nexus Institute and Digitale Gesellschaft (Digital Society) e.V., along with Dr. Ben Wagner (Vienna University of Economics and Business) as a subcontractor, and was completed in December 2019.

The dialogue model is being implemented in a follow-up project ("Dialogue on Cyber Security"), which started in October 2020.