• The Federal Ministry for Digitalisation and Government Modernisation has commissioned Telekom and SAP, as the winning bidders, to develop a sovereign AI platform
• Intelligent document processing and the acceleration of planning and approval procedures
• First practical application for document processing, knowledge management and text summarisation

Google and adesso have withdrawn their objections to the award. This clears the way for an AI platform that, for the first time, offers the federal government, the states and local authorities a shared infrastructure. As the winning bidder, Deutsche Telekom, together with SAP, was awarded the contract by the Federal Ministry for Digitalisation and State Modernisation (BMDS) for the tender to “provide PaaS services for AI applications on a powerful, secure and sovereign cloud platform”.

Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger: The backbone of digital administration

With this decision, the Federal Government is sending a strong signal: Germany is stepping up the pace in the automation of administrative processes. Karsten Wildberger, Federal Minister for Digital Affairs and State Modernisation, emphasises: “With the AI Cloud, we are creating the backbone of a sovereign, digital and AI-enabled administration in Germany. We are thus implementing a strategic decision: high-performance digitalisation for the federal, state and local governments runs on an infrastructure that we control ourselves – secure, scalable and compatible with European standards. Together with our partners, we are setting the benchmark against which digital sovereignty will be measured in future. The task now is to roll out digital solutions further across the public administration sector and thereby accelerate the necessary modernisation drive for our country.”

Telekom CEO Höttges: “Europe is taking its digital future into its own hands”

For Tim Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG, the decision is a political commitment: “Anyone who wants to play a role in the world in future must be at the forefront of the race for digital sovereignty. Europe has a huge amount of catching up to do, which we will not achieve through discussions, but only through action. Telekom is leading the way here with SAP. Together, we are ensuring that Germany and Europe take control of their digital future.”

Central hub for the entire public administration

The AI platform is designed as a central hub for the entire public administration: scalable, expandable and compatible with existing specialist processes. What starts today as infrastructure will become tomorrow’s development environment for new AI-supported administrative services.

KIPITZ: AI assistant for public administration

Among the first applications is KIPITZ – an AI solution that supports administrative staff with intelligent document processing, knowledge management, translations, text summarisation and the acceleration of planning and approval procedures. The platform integrates AI services, development environments and interfaces to existing specialist systems. It is operated on Telekom’s sovereign infrastructure.

SAP CEO Christian Klein: “Trustworthy AI as the foundation of digital sovereignty”

For SAP, too, the initiative underscores the strategic importance of sovereign AI infrastructure: “Digital sovereignty and artificial intelligence belong together. This is precisely where this initiative comes in: we are contributing our strengths in business processes, data and trustworthy AI via the SAP Business AI Platform to accelerate innovation in the public sector together with Telekom – securely, scalably and in line with a common standard for local authorities, federal states and the federal government as part of the Deutschland-Stack,” says Christian Klein, CEO of SAP SE.

Deutschland-Stack as the foundation

The AI platform is a key component of the so-called Deutschland-Stack – a shared digital infrastructure for the federal, state and local governments. The aim is for public authorities to build on shared technical standards and platforms in future, rather than developing numerous individual solutions. This is intended to make public administration more modern, secure and efficient.