The digitalisation of public administration in Germany is gathering pace: the Federal Ministry for Digitalisation and Modernisation of the State (BMDS) has commissioned Deutsche Telekom, in collaboration with SAP, to develop a sovereign AI platform for the federal, state and local governments. Once the tendering process has been completed, this will result in the creation of a shared infrastructure – the first of its kind – on which AI applications for public administration can be developed and operated in future.

Digital sovereignty as a strategic goal

Through this project, the German government is aiming to establish a high-performance yet sovereign cloud infrastructure for the use of artificial intelligence in public administration. The aim is to make administrative processes more efficient, accelerate the digital transformation and, at the same time, strengthen control over critical digital infrastructure in Germany and Europe.

Federal Minister for Digital Affairs Dr Karsten Wildberger describes the planned AI cloud as the “backbone of a sovereign, digital and AI-enabled public administration”. The platform is intended to be secure, scalable and compatible with existing specialist systems, thereby laying the foundation for numerous future digital administrative services.

KIPITZ supports public sector staff in their day-to-day work

One of the first applications on the new platform is the AI assistant KIPITZ. The solution is designed to support public sector employees in areas such as intelligent document processing, knowledge management, translations and the creation of text summaries. In addition, planning and approval procedures are to be accelerated.

The platform integrates various AI services, development environments and interfaces to existing specialist systems. It is operated on Deutsche Telekom’s sovereign infrastructure.

A building block for the Deutschland-Stack

The new AI platform is also a key component of the so-called Deutschland-Stack. The concept behind this is a shared digital infrastructure for the federal government, the Länder and local authorities, based on uniform standards. Instead of numerous parallel individual solutions, public authorities will in future be able to use shared platforms and technologies – with the aim of making public administration more efficient, secure and future-proof.

Deutsche Telekom and SAP, both long-standing partners of the Smart Country Convention, are thus driving forward one of the most significant digitalisation projects currently underway for public administration. They will also be represented again at the Smart Country Convention 2026, where they will share their perspectives on digital sovereignty, cloud technologies and the use of artificial intelligence in the public sector.