Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in automotiveIT's digital roundtable on the topic of "Navigate the Next in the European Automotive Industry - Digitalization and Focusing on the Core Business". Together with the moderators Pascal Nagel, Yannick Tiedemann and Klaus Straub, as well as the other panelists Stephan Fingerling, Christoph Röger, Thomas Buck, Martin Köhn and Jörg Sommer, this resulted in an interesting and lively discussion on the digitalization of the automotive industry and the implications for the IT function. It was great fun!

The use of Internet services is currently creating data silos that are not very transparent and can hardly be controlled. In terms of the digital sovereignty of the individual, it is therefore desirable for users to be able to decide for themselves when, how and for what purpose personal data is transmitted. The concept of self-sovereign identities addresses this point and attempts to address the current challenges of digital identity management.

On behalf of the Verbraucherzentrale NRW, I have written a (German-language) article that discusses the conceptual foundations as well as the opportunities and challenges of self-determined identities and shows how they can contribute to strengthening consumers' digital sovereignty. Please find the article here.