High-ranking visitor at the ITM: On August 31, NRW’s Minister of Justice Thomas Kutschaty was a guest at the ITM. The Minister accepted an invitation on the occasion of the recently launched ABIDA project to get an idea of the premises and the work of the institute as a national competence center during an “open day”. The Dean of the Faculty of Law, Prof. Dr. Ingo Saenger, and other members of the faculty also attended the event at the Leonardo Campus.
After a brief welcome, Prof. Dr. Thomas Hoeren and Prof. Dr. Bernd Holznagel LL.M. the special structure of the ITM and the cooperation between the civil and public law departments. Thanks to its direct proximity to the Academy of Fine Arts and the Department of Information Systems, the ITM is particularly involved in cooperative interdisciplinary research and teaching. In his speech, the Minister emphasized the importance of information law issues for the future of NRW and Germany. The ministry is working intensively on topics such as the digital agenda and big data. The group set up for this purpose also relies on the expertise of research institutes such as the ITM.
A tour of the building gave the guests an impression of the atmosphere. The various research areas then presented themselves, including the big data project ABIDA, the DFN Legal Research Center based at the ITM, research on broadband expansion, digital public space in democracy and IT security awareness (ITS.APT).
Minister Kutschaty was impressed by the scope of the research and very interested in the hot topics. He was delighted with the Institute’s willingness to work closely with him: “My staff and I have found a goldmine today!”