10. Creating a Digital Agency as a modern centre of excellence Digitisation poses big challenges to public policy and governmental supervisory authorities. The issues at the center of concern are fair competition, confidentiality of communication, security of the systems used and consumer protection. The tasks evolving from these considerations are currently carried out by a number of agencies at the federal level, including the Federal Network Agency for Electricity, Gas, Telecommunications, Post and Railway (Bundesnetzagentur), the Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik), the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (Bundesamt für Verbraucherschutz und Lebensmittelsicherheit) and the Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt). Competencies in the area of digitisation are currently fragmented. In order to enable our institutions to deal with the dynamics and broad scope of digitisation, we need modern concepts for developing and implementing policies. In order to answer questions on digitisation in aspects relating to competition law, the market and consumers, not only do we need a digital agenda, rather also a Digital Agency that will function as a highly efficient and internationally connected centre of excellence at the federal level. This centre would provide competent, neutral and long-term assistance to the federal government both as a think tank in preparing policies, and as a service point for implementation, and would also assist in the digitisation process while representing the interest of business and consumers. www.de.digital 55