The Association of Taxpayers (BdSt) has denounced in its current “Black Book” also wasting taxpayers’ money on IT issues: The association criticized that the Hamburg Senate “slept for eight years” because despite long-known support -End it still ran on 9000 administration computers with Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system. Now the Hanseatic city has to buy expensive extended support. At the federal level, the association complains about how the IT modernization of the federal administration has been “screwed up” and has led to a cost explosion.

“Schildbürgerstreich” with Windows 7 Overall 526. 000 Euro costs Hamburg the support contract for outdated Windows 7 computers, announced the BdSt. The BdSt Hamburg chairman Lorenz Palte described this to the dpa as a “felt little bourgeois prank”. This contract became necessary because with the discontinuation of Microsoft customer service for the old operating system in January 2020 in the public sector still more than 9123 Computers with Windows 7 were running – 8028 of which at the police.

The taxpayers’ association The Senate reported it as follows: “Minus the police devices were on 14. January 2020 already about 98 percent of devices on Windows 10 migrated. ” The crippling changeover is essentially due to “hardware or software not yet provided”. Planning for the conversion has already started 2016. But Hamburg is by no means alone: ​​In many authorities, Windows 7, which is actually no longer supported, is still running on the computers. This year alone, the federal government will pay around 526 for the required special support. 000 Euro.

Unconsolidated IT consolidation At the federal level, the BdSt castigates the mammoth project the “Bund IT Consolidation”, which has been running for five years. This should actually modernize and standardize the operating systems and computer workstations of all ministries and authorities of the federal administration, but it is obviously anything but smooth. According to reports leaked to the press, the time and cost plans seem to be no longer tenable even after the re-allocation of responsibility with sovereignty at the Federal Chancellery. In addition, the project seems threatened overall. The Federal Audit Office had already criticized the project several times.

The BdSt complains that the sum originally estimated for the project in the three-digit million range was now spent on consultancy fees alone. 257, the government had already paid 6 million euros for the external expertise up to the beginning 2025 ; by 2025 plan