Digital Public Service News

On November 20 and 21, 2024, the first Base4NFDI user conference took place at Fraunhofer FOKUS in Berlin, with almost 200 international guests from the NFDI community. The conference was organized by Base4NFDI, an initiative for the joint development and provision of research data management (RDM)-capable services.

Prof. Dr. Nassrin Hajinejad, research associate at our Competence Center Public IT (ÖFIT), has accepted a professorship in media informatics at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (HTW) as of 1 October 2024. Her work will focus on the application of information and communication technologies in the areas of Smart City, Smart Country and Smart Society.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being incorporated into industrial applications. However, AI largely acts as a black box: the calculations are often opaque to users – resulting in a lack of trust. The European research project XMANAI, involving Fraunhofer FOKUS and 14 other partners, has therefore broadened the view into AI and made its decision-making processes comprehensible.

Supporting evidence-based policy making with technologies for data analysis and co-creation: This was the aim of the EU project DECIDO, which developed a portal featuring cloud-based tools for linking public policies and datasets. DECIDO also empowered citizen engagement in this process and underwent testing by public authorities in Italy, Finland, Spain, and Greece. With the project now completed, its outcomes are being disseminated freely on an open-source platform.

The Horizon Europe project ODEON was launched in January 2024: 34 organisations from across Europe collaborate to develop an ecosystem for the digital energy transition. The objective is to enable a fair and secure exchange of data between all actors in the energy value chain - and to develop data-based smart energy services on this foundation while making them flexibly available. As a project partner, we are contributing our expertise in data management and creating a marketplace for energy data based on piveau®.

From research to application: In the EU project AI-DAPT, which was launched at the beginning of January, 18 European project partners develop data-centred solutions for the entire life cycle of artificial intelligence (AI) in practical use. The services enable the automation of intelligent data AI pipelines – from data acquisition to the development of AI models and their execution. The AI-DAPT solutions will be tested in the fields of healthcare, robotics, energy and manufacturing.

How do activities, professional requirements, working methods and work culture change as a result of the digitalisation of the public sector? Which competences and qualifications will be increasingly important in the future? How must successful qualification 4.0, suitable learning and teaching for the public sector be designed? These questions were addressed by the “Qualifica Digitalis” project - a project of the IT Planning Council under the leadership of the Senator for Finance of the State of Bremen. The results of the project have now been published in five comprehensive volumes.

Submit applications simply online: this has also been possible for chambers of tax advisors since September 2023 As part of the Online Access Act, a portal has been created that bundles the administrative services of the chambers and is the point of contact for the communicative needs of the connected chambers of tax consultants. Tax consultant chambers and their examination centres can use the central portal to accept applications, authorisations and licences.

The Digital Public Services business unit has already cooperated with the Low-Code Association e.V. on several occasions. Since 9 November 2023, Fraunhofer FOKUS, represented by our group head Nadja Menz, is now also an official member of the association.

In the EU project GLASS, organisations from all over Europe work on user-centric solutions for cross-border e-government. The project has now entered its final phase: GLASS technologies are being tested through demonstrators for three different use cases - moving to another country, a short visit, and working in another European country. To this end, the project partners developed an eIDAS-compatible e-wallet platform with a single sign-on, which enables citizens to digitally carry documents such as educational qualifications with them.

The Senate Department for Labour, Social Affairs, Equality, Integration, Diversity and Anti-Discrimination presents a new digital solution for visualising social data. The Social Information System (SIS), which received the Berlin Administration Prize in 2021, is being expanded to include a dashboard functionality. This enables social data to be visualised in the form of graphics, maps and diagrams. The Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS provided scientific support for the project and assisted with the technical implementation.

Prof. Dr. Sonja Schimmler took on a visiting professorship at the Technische Universität Berlin on October 1, 2023. In the coming years, she will set up and lead the “Research Data Infrastructure” department at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. At the same time, she will continue to work as a research group lead in the Digital Public Services business unit at Fraunhofer FOKUS.

The Digital Public Services business unit today presents the publication “Low-Code-Canvas – Gestaltungsaspekte von Low-Code-Plattformen”, which was developed in cooperation with the Low-Code Association e.V., on the occasion of the German Low-Code Day 2023.

The urban data platform “WISSENsAllmende Jena” goes live. The Smart City project “Jena digitalisiert, lernt und teilt. Unsere Stadt schafft und nutzt WISSEN” reaches a significant milestone. The platform intends to collect, analyse and use data from various urban areas to further improve city life for citizens. As a project partner, Fraunhofer FOKUS has developed key components of the digital infrastructure.

A European data economy for the benefit of all stakeholders – and private individuals with full control over their own data: In the EU DataVaults project, 17 partners from across Europe have been researching on an innovative data marketplace since 2020 which will enable individuals to confidently share their personal data with organisations of their choice – securely, fairly, well-informed, remunerated and at their own discretion. The project has now been successfully completed and key components of the project can be reused.

Demand forecasts, optimisation of plant performance, predictive maintenance: the recently integrated demonstrators of the EU project XMANAI show how artificial intelligence (AI) can improve industrial production - and at the same time make the decision-making processes of AI comprehensible for users. Four companies are now testing various XMANAI use cases in pilot operations.

Experiments with human-robot interaction can now take place in both real and virtual spaces. The new study “Virtual reality check”, designed by our scientist Jana Plomin, explores the question of whether robots are perceived and experienced differently in virtual environments.

Organising urban mobility with big data platforms and algorithms: This was the topic of the “URBANITE” project, which was successfully completed in June 2023. The H2020 project, which was coordinated by “Tecnalia Research and Innovation” and implemented with 11 EU partners, aimed to create a model for sustainable urban development using the example of urban mobility. Fraunhofer FOKUS was primarily responsible for the development of the data management platform, which supports the entire data processing process from data collection to processing and utilisation.

The open data portal for Bavaria is online: With “Open Data Bayern”, byte - Bayerische Agentur für Digitales, provides the first version of a platform as a central point of contact for open data from Bavaria. With the objective to provide easier access to public data for business, science and civil society, the open data of existing regional and municipal portals in Bavaria will be brought together step by step. Fraunhofer FOKUS has technically implemented the portal on behalf of byte and the Bavarian State Ministry for Digital Affairs and together with the Data Competence Centre for Cities and Regions (DKSR).

In the Horizon 2020 project XMANAI, Fraunhofer FOKUS works together with 14 other partners from all over Europe to make artificial intelligence (AI) more comprehensible for industrial production - and thus create trust in this technology. The first test version of the XMANAI platform is now online and is being tested by the project partners.

Dr Yury Glikman, Deputy Head of Business Unit Digital Public Services and Head of the Open Service Engineering expert group at Fraunhofer FOKUS, was re-elected to the OW2 Directors Board as a company representative on 3 March 2023. The non-profit European open source organisation unites software developers from all over the world who develop industry-ready open source middleware, business applications and cloud computing platforms and distribute them to everyone. With over 2000 members, OW2 is one of the most important open source communities in the world.

To manage and share data in a secure and trustworthy manner, specialized data platforms are required, especially for public institutions and the business community, which is why the EU-funded Horizon Europe project PISTIS started in January 2023. For a kick-off meeting of PISTIS, 60 representatives of the partners met for two days at Fraunhofer FOKUS.

The new guide, “A Fuzz Testing Introduction with CC-specific Guidance” of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), produced by Fraunhofer FOKUS on behalf of the BSI, deals with fuzz testing, also called fuzzing. Fuzzing follows a negative testing approach that aims at detecting implementation errors of software with effects on robustness and security.

The prototype for the social information system of the Berlin Senate Department for Integration, Labor and Social Affairs (SenIAS), developed together with Fraunhofer FOKUS, was awarded second place by the Governing Mayor of Berlin at the Administrative Award ceremony on October 26. The submitted prototype reflects the current work status of a project for the publication of social data under the responsibility of SenIAS.

On June 30, the Federal Network Agency announced the winners of the GAIA-X funding competition organized by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The POSSIBLE project, in which Fraunhofer FOKUS is also involved as a partner, is one of the competition winners.

On July 2, the Joint Science Conference (Gemeinsame Wissenschaftskonferenz – GWK) decided to fund the NFDI for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence proposal (NFDI4DataScience). The consortium is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems.

GovTech Campus Deutschland e.V. was founded on June 25th in Berlin. The aim of the association is to promote cooperation between administration, science and business as well as civil society.

As part of a research project funded by the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Senate Chancellery, the Digital Public Services business unit of Fraunhofer FOKUS has developed a prototype for an app that is intended to serve as a key to greater citizen participation by providing improved information. Instead of digging through Berlin's digital offerings on one's own, the KiezRadar app informs citizens proactively and on-demand about important events from politics and administration. The final report has just been published.

Co-funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation framework programme, ACROSS – Towards user journeys for the delivery of cross-border services ensuring data sovereignty. Spanning through three years, ACROSS consists of a consortium of 10 partners from 7 countries: Athens Technology Center (co-ordinator), Tecnalia, Dataport, Engineering, Fraunhofer, GRNET, TimeLex, Lisbon Council, WAAG Society, VARAM. The project kicked off its activities in February 2021, with an energising online meeting, where all partners took the floor to present their ambitious plans to make the project a great success.

The Competence Center Public Information Technology (ÖFIT) at the Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS examined the question: “How digital is Germany? What is the current state of digitization in Germany at the federal level?“ On May 6th, the German digitization index will be published for the third time.