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Comment by bell-cot | Hacker News Reader

> The agreement stipulates that the CSU will be in charge of the “super–high-tech ministry,” as party leader Markus Söder called it in a press conference this week. The CSU has not proposed a minister yet, but it’s widely expected that Dorothee Bär, who was in charge of “digital infrastructure” in previous governments under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, will get the nod.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothee_B%C3%A4r

Sounds like her only non-political experience is working as a journalist.

It's arguable that the "corrupt" part was scrubbed off Wikipedia. But her credentials to lead a research / technology / aerospace ministry certainly sound underwhelming.

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German only, sorry. Both are reputable news outlets (though the Spiegel has gone down quite a bit in recent years IMHO).

https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-04/baer-csu-geh... https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/csu-politikerin-d...

She hired her future husband as an employee until immediately before their wedding. This position was paid by the federal German parliament, i.e. the taxpayer. It's illegal to hire a relative in such a position.

Thanks. Having read the (auto-translated) article in Der Spiegel, I agree that Bär's prior behavior suggests nepotism.

It's CSU, of course it is.

Not that other parties are better...

>who was in charge of “digital infrastructure” in previous governments

germany's digital infrastructure is a global laughing stock, this doesn't bode well.

That's more a mistranslation of the role.

Digital infrastructure was part of traffic ministry.

Her role was coordinating the government's mostly internal digital strategy. Thus reviewing new bills, looking at processes inside the administration etc. most of the work outside the public eye.

You're claiming this, but average German internet speed has but recently surpassed Latvia's, easily beats Paraguay and the Philippines and is closing in on Montenegro and Barbados.

The recent rapid improvements even diminished Romania's lead to less than 250%.

Of course this is only up to the Telekom speedtest server, beyond that nearly all of Germany's 50-100Tbps get funneled through 362Gbps of interconnections onto the open internet.

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