Digitalisation at the BfS

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Digitalisation is one of the key challenges for the federal administration as it seeks to equip itself for the future. At the BfS, we see digitalisation as a comprehensive and transformative task that affects all areas of our work. It concerns both specialist and administrative processes as well as the forms of collaboration inside and outside an institution.

But above all, successful digitalisation means seeing this process as more than just a technological challenge. It is not (only) a question of procuring or creating software. It is mainly a question of how and for what purpose we want to collaborate in the future. Under what conditions will our actions be successful? How can we influence these conditions?

This is as much a question of working and communication culture as it is of correct strategy and vision and of the scope for sensible participation by BfS staff – always on the basis of our statutory mandate.

Digitalisation project group

In order address the challenges of the necessary transformations associated with digitalisation, the BfS has set up an interdepartmental project group tasked with raising the awareness of digitalisation as an important, cross-cutting task.

Central to this is the question of the needs of users – be they employees or interested members of the public.

The focal topics of the group include:

Digital sovereignty

For the tasks of the BfS, it is essential to maintain a robust and independent digital infrastructure so that operational capabilities can be maintained in an emergency. One key aspect of this is to maintain in-house expertise in specialist programmes and processes, including the development of open standards and solutions that are regularly published on Github.

Innovations relating to the Online Access Act

The Act to Improve Online Access to Administrative Services (Online Access Act – OZG) requires the federal government, federal states, and municipalities to provide their administrative services – also in digital form – via administrative portals. Recognising the challenges of digitalisation as a continuous improvement process, the OZG will keep us busy over the next few years.

Anker3Agile collaboration

The immensely growing complexity and simultaneous acceleration in digitalisation poses major challenges for all organisations. These challenges are even greater in the administration because they have an influence on all levels such as structure, organisation, “product/service”, culture, technology, processes, and methods because of historical structures and statutory tasks.

By adopting agile ways of thinking and working, collaborating within the various projects, and developing corresponding role and skill profiles, the digitalisation project group drives the digital transformation of the organisation of the federal office from within.

Data-driven administration

At the BfS, the plan is to create an "organisational" platform that allows both internal and external data experts to develop use cases innovatively, jointly, and collaboratively. It is therefore important to create a central, accessible, and powerful technical platform based on a sustainable and flexible architecture. The data strategy required as a basis for this was launched at the end of 2022. For some time, the BfS has made environmental data freely available according to open standards.