30 years provet e.V. and 20 years provet at the University of Kassel

The research group founded by the Kassel professor of public law Alexander Roßnagel pursues a unique jurisprudential research approach: It investigates in an interdisciplinary and design-oriented manner how state-of-the-art information technology should be designed in a constitutionally compatible and socially beneficial manner. It is based on the insight that legal goals such as fundamental rights, democracy and the rule of law can only be enforced in a technology-driven world if law influences technology. Therefore, this research aims at analyzing possible consequences of cutting-edge technologies and how they can be influenced by a design of technology that is oriented towards these legal goals. At the same time, in order to be acceptable and accepted, these technology applications need a legal framework that fits them. Therefore, provet drafts proposals for legislation that guides the development of information technologies in the knowledge of their possible technological consequences. For this research, provet develops its own appropriate research methods.

This interdisciplinary approach is not only highly relevant to society, but also to research. Many intensive collaborations with scientists from other disciplines and 91 third-party funded projects, including 13 projects supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and 4 projects funded by the State of Hesse's Offensive for the Development of Scientific and Economic Excellence (LOEWE), testify to the fruitfulness of the research approach. Proposals for a constitutionally compatible design were developed by provet for e-commerce, e-government, e-justice, e-payment, electronic signatures, electronic elections, long-term archiving, mobile internet, social networks, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, self-learning algorithms, ubiquitous computing, wearable computing, smart car, smart home, smart health, industry 4.0 and many other information technology applications. Provet produced draft laws for technology-adequate further development of the law, including for the Signature Act, the Teleservices Data Protection Act, the Identity Card Act, the De-Mail Act, the Trust Services Act and a Data Protection Audit Act, an Electoral Service Providers Act and a Modernization of Data Protection Law.

The research approach has also had a positive impact on provet's employees. Over the past 20 years, four provet employees have achieved a post-doctoral degree and 60 employees have completed a dissertation.

provet's interdisciplinary commitment also had a structure-building effect for the University of Kassel: Together with computer science professor Klaus David and business information systems professor Udo Winand, Roßnagel founded the Research Center for Information Technology Design (ITeG) in 2005. Today, this is one of the four scientific centers of the University of Kassel and unites eleven professorships from seven scientific disciplines, which together successfully research the question of how modern information technology can be designed in a socially beneficial way.

Since May 2018, Prof. Roßnagel has been leading provet together with Professor of Public Law and IT Law Gerrit Hornung, who will continue to lead provet with the same objectives in the coming years.

The development of provet and the scientific questions pursued by the research group are documented in the book:
Alexander Roßnagel | Gerrit Hornung |Christian L. Geminn | Paul C. Johannes (eds.), Rechtsverträgliche Technikgestaltung und technikadäquate Rechtsentwicklung - 30 Jahre Projektgruppe verfassungsverträgliche Technikgestaltung, Series: ITeG - Interdisciplinary Research on Information System Design, Volume 7, kassel university press, Kassel 2018.