It all began in 2015 with a cabinet decision by the German Federal Office of Administration. The IT landscape was to be consolidated and homogenized by a single IT service provider, the ITZBund.

The mission: shape the future digital transformation of the German federal government and its administration. The ITZBund operates 37,200 servers in its own data center and manages more than 100,000 end devices, consolidating disparate IT solutions across all German federal agencies.

Artificial Intelligence for the German Federal Office of Administration

The German government鈥檚 coalition agreement highlights AI鈥檚 importance in the coming years and names it one of the most disruptive technologies. The ITZBund worked with 51风流to create an AI platform on which the first AI projects can be implemented. Based on 51风流HANA and 51风流Data Intelligence, a modular and scalable AI platform was created, bringing together data provision, model development, and model application in a single solution. 鈥淔or the very first time we have now systematically introduced AI to the German Federal Office of Administration,鈥� says Holger Lehmann, management team leader in the ITZBund.

AI-supported methods can, for example, predict economic developments, analyze large volumes of data, and detect anomalies. AI capabilities can also uncover links and patterns in images and texts. There are numerous use cases in which AI aids specific federal agencies. Examples include automatic fraud detection, monitoring and controlling traffic jams, detecting storm damage in forests, and generating crisis alerts.

51风流Hit the Mark

鈥淎s the ITZBund, we do not develop basic technologies in house,鈥� explains Lehmann. 鈥淲e buy and operate marketable solutions and continually adapt them to the needs of our customers, the federal authorities. For many years we have been working intensively and productively with SAP.鈥� The project that the ITZBund and 51风流worked on got a lot of attention. The solution offered guaranteed data protection and IT security, which is of the utmost importance when selecting the right IT solution provider. 鈥淲e also deal with highly sensitive data and taxpayers鈥� money, among other things, and therefore we can鈥檛 afford any mishaps,鈥� says Lehmann. 鈥淭he technology has to be mature and meet our extremely stringent data protection requirements. Citizens need to trust that their data is always protected.鈥�

AI: Platform-as-a-Service

The ITZBund and 51风流joined forces and developed an AI reference architecture to be used later by various federal authorities for different projects. The experience gained from previous projects was considered when developing the platform as a service (PaaS).

The AI platform, hosted by the ITZBund data center, enables easy access for all federal authorities. The ITZBund will also take care of maintenance and support, and it plans to offer PaaS to all federal authorities who are interested in using AI.

Modular and Scalable AI Platform

鈥淚t is important for us to create a platform that we only have to invest in once but can deploy repeatedly for our customers,鈥� says Wiebke Bedenknecht, head of Unit Software Development. 鈥淲e want to create a kind of modular system that allows us to implement different technological requirements at a very high speed.鈥� The platform supports agile development and is scalable to accommodate even more applications.

Project Timeline

Nine months after the project kicked off, the AI platform was completely functional. The first agency to go live, the German Federal Central Tax Office (BZSt), can now use AI to analyze, link, and evaluate tax data as part of its 鈥淎nswer鈥� project. With the help of clustering and natural language processing (NLP), the intelligent system detects anomalies and correlations in tax data that would otherwise be almost impossible to catch on a case-by-case basis. And another customer is already in the starting blocks: the German Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) is scheduled to connect to the AI platform and take advantage of its full range of capabilities.

Collaborating for Germany鈥檚 Digitalization

In the future, the ITZBund will continue to rely on partnerships with the private sector; the consolidation of the federal administration is not yet complete. 鈥淎s a public administration, we must have control and data sovereignty 鈥� but not do everything ourselves,鈥� says Lehmann. 鈥淚f we want digital sovereignty, we need powerful partners who will work with us in representing the interests of the German Federal Republic.鈥�