On 2 October 2015, Dieter Sarreither was appointed President of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) and Federal Returning Officer. He succeeded Roderich Egeler, who retired.
Since 1 July 2011, Dieter Sarreither had been Vice-President of the Federal Statistical Office. At this Office, he had been Head of the Department on "Information Technology, Mathematical-Statistical Methods" since 2000. Since 2011, he had been Vice-President of the Federal Statistical Office and Deputy Federal Returning Officer.
Dieter Sarreither was born in Frankenthal/Pfalz in 1951. After finishing his mathematics and economics studies in Heidelberg and Mainz, he started his professional career in operations research and system analysis in the private sector.
In 1982, he joined the Federal Statistical Office and became Assistant Head of Section in software development. Afterwards, he was Head of Section and Head of Division and was responsible for the development of strategies, standards and software tools for the information technology within the system of statistical offices.
As IT Director, he launched manifold initiatives to implement e-government in official statistics. Under the heading of e-statistics, they led to a comprehensive modernisation of statistical processes.
Dieter Sarreither is married and has two daughters.