Germany’s ITZBund is moving federal IT into the cloud

In order to avoid falling into the trap of legacy applications, Germany’s federal center for Information Technology, the ITZBund, recognized early to execute a future-oriented cloud landscape, says Christine Serrette, the federal administration’s CIO and deputy technical director. The ITZBund acts as a central IT service provider for the federal administration and operates a wide range of critical processes in the areas of transport, budget, taxes, internal security, and integration, for example. Cloud first is, therefore, one of the center’s three strategic goals, alongside agile working methods and Federal Client, the incident reporting tool, which evaluates bids and award of contracts.

Federal cloud and federal operating platform

The path to the cloud began in 2016 with the creation of the Federal Cloud, Serrette says, and the ITZBund uses it for the federal e-file, collaboration scenarios, and as a project management and development platform.

During the course of this, the Federal Operating Platform was created, a private cloud environment divided into various security levels. “In 2022, we received the world’s first VS-NfD approval and basic protection certification from the BSI for this cloud,” she says, speaking of approval for classified information for official use only, which is the lowest of four levels of secrecy for authorities. 

The next development is called Bundescloud 2.0 and includes, among other things, the upgrade to new private cloud platforms without losing the BSI certification.

“But we are also realistic and know we have our private cloud for the long term since we can’t develop the way the market is developing,” she says. Against this background, a program was created intended to further develop the ITZBund into a multicloud manager. Several key projects are assigned to this program including BC Business Transformation, Multi-Cloud Platform, Federal Cloud 2.0, and MS Sovereign Cloud, and part of the transformation, Serrette wants to adapt and redesign both the internal processes and the interaction with customers. “Ordering, procurement, provision, and billing processes must be fundamentally changed,” she says.

The Multi-Cloud Platform project is designed to create the technical requirements for multi-cloud management. In addition to the existing Federal Cloud, the ITZBund is also building an external cloud in its own data centers, which will be operated and further developed by service providers. Serrette also wants to use services from a sovereign cloud in the future, offered by external providers such as SAP. “For data and applications that don’t require special protection, we’ll use public cloud,” she says.

However, the hurdles for this are considerable. For example, the ITZBund has to develop a sophisticated system to manage the different IT levels and create public tenders. Serrette’s team also developed a marketing and communications strategy for the multicloud management program.

Value proposition

Serrette emphasizes that she and her team offer customers a quick path to digitalization. “We can act quickly and flexibly, make services available at short notice, and dismantle them just as quickly,” she says. On this basis, ministries and authorities are offered a range of important services, including the federal e-file, training systems, and the development and project management platforms. Using container platforms, the ITZBund also supports projects in the context of the Online Access Act (OZG), which forms the legal basis for Germany’s digital modernization, and regulates digitizing administrative services through administrative portals.