thx for the kind replies, on and off list :)
Yes, I'll stay close, regarding both my views on digital politics and as a volunteer (latter to be figured out how and when). And yes, the interior / homeland branch tends towards administrative incarnation of darkness. Maybe within a certain radius I can be a luzifer in there :) The team I'll be working in is called "data policy, data strategy, Open Data in the federal administration and in the interior branch", so if anything in those areaa needs to be addressed, let me know.
Am Di., 18. Apr. 2023 um 12:38 Uhr schrieb Phil Bradley-Schmieg < pbradley@wikimedia.org>:
We've chatted about this privately, so I'll just quickly (re-)offer... a. congratulations for the new move, b. gratitude for everything you've given to the Movement so far, and c. sincere hope to see you remain Movement-involved (or at least Movement-aligned, to the extent you can!) in the future!
While losing the direct involvement of good people is never a great thing, the quality of our governments' rulemaking and policymaking correlates directly to the quality of people they hire. So it's definitely a good thing to be seeing ministries like the BMI hiring good people like John.
LG, Phil
On Wed, 12 Apr 2023 at 15:56, Mathias Schindler < mathias.schindler@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear John,
out of all German federal ministries, the BMI has the most consistent and proven track record to claim its rightful place on the dark side. Even many of the more well-meaning people will be part of a machinery that has a traditionally hostile approach to civil rights, digital rights and civil society whenever their interests collide with those of the security apparatus.
Having said that, there is always hope that one more well-meaning person can help tip the scale and can help counter-balance the priorities within the ministry (which is surprisingly immune to whoever the current minister is) and I sincerely wish that you will be that person.
Good luck on your journey.
Mathias
On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 7:33 AM John Hendrik Weitzmann < john.weitzmann@wikimedia.de> wrote:
Hi all,
here's a little announcement for y'all: I'll be changing jobs in May, leaving the general counsel job at WMDE in order to work as a lawyer in the German federal ministry of the interior, in a department called digital society and information technology (abbreviated DG). My future team lead asked me whether people would see this as 'moving to the dak side', but I reassured her that policy Wikimedians are way too professional to misunderstand it that way ;) In DG I'll have opportunity to work on some of the very same government projects that we at WMDE tried to influence, and I'm pretty sure that they hire me at least in part because of that civil society background. So, if it is in fact dark over there in certain ways, they seem to strive for some additional light through recruitment (several people from NGOs were hired recently).
As of now, I don't really know much about how close the DG department is to what the German government does in the Council and to European affairs in general. Much of that is done by / through the foreign ministry. But if you have specific suggestions or wishes around data policy in Germany and such, let me know. I cannot of course guarantee anything, but as mentioned above, there seems to be openness for the civil society mindset and good ideas are hard to stop. And, simultaneously to me moving to the ministry, the policy team at WMDE is now complete, with the last vacancy filled, There's now more people power available at WMDE for wikimedian policy work than ever before. That, plus all of you (plus WMEU as a platform) will help shape digital policy that benefits Free Knowledge. At some point I might re-join as a volunteer, still to be figured out, and there will probably be a replacement GC at WMDE soon to help with legistic stuff.
In the mantime, find me on LinkedIn or get in touch via private email at jhweitzmann@web.de, yours
John _______________________________________________ Publicpolicy mailing list -- publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to publicpolicy-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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