The digitalization partner for public administration
We work closely with the federal government to design and implement innovative digital solutions
Facing a challenging digitalization project? Need a digitalization strategy? No problem.
Partnering with us means you can rely on our comprehensive expertise. Our specialists in software development, product management, transformation, design, and user research work seamlessly together to digitalize administrative processes with ease. We don’t just replicate analog processes digitally – we create user-centered solutions for large-scale digitalization projects and build them ourselves.
We are working for a digital Germany.
As a 100% subsidiary of the federal government, we always act for the public good and therefore in the interests of citizens. This makes us both a competent partner and a paragon of reliability for public administrations.
Leadership Team
Anna-Lisa Obermann
Head of People & Workplace
LinkedIn
Dr. Clara Völker
Head of Product
LinkedIn
Nils Diezemann
Head of Communications
LinkedIn
Martin Jordan
Head of Design & User Research
LinkedIn
Lisa Schönfelder
Head of Finance & Procurement
LinkedIn
Mike Pierce
Head of Engineering – People
LinkedIn
Niko Felger
Head of Engineering – Technology
LinkedIn
Christian Müller
Head of Transformation
LinkedIn
Dr. Jutta Kling
Lead Project Management Office
LinkedIn
Max Erdrich
Unit Lead Digitalization of Law
LinkedIn
Anna Sinell
Unit Lead Policy Instruments for Digital Transformation
LinkedIn
Milestones
June 2025
The Work4Germany Fellowship wins the “Public Leadership Award 2025”. The Fellowship team accepted the award in the category “Change Maker II - Personnel & Future Skills” at the 11th Future Congress State & Administration. The jury of representatives from business and civil society particularly praised the Fellowship's impetus for an efficient state and the changes it has initiated in the federal administration – by empowering managers, employees and teams to work together in new ways.
June 2025
Servicestandard.gov.de goes live as a beta version and clearly bundles all the content of the Servicestandard, which provides quality requirements for the development and operation of good digital administrative services. The website will be continuously expanded and improved – also with the help of feedback, which can be provided at a low threshold via open comments.
March 2025
DIN SPEC 66336, “Quality Requirements for Online Services and Portals of Public Administration (Servicestandard)”, defines clear and verifiable criteria for user-friendly digital administrative services for the first time. The aim is to elevate the previously inconsistent quality of digital services to a uniformly high standard.
A milestone has been reached on the path to online civil court procedures: the Federal Ministry of Justice and the project team are launching the digital lawsuit for air passenger rights at service.justiz.de/fluggastrechte. With the help of a digital submission system, citizens can prepare a complaint and submit it to pilot courts.
January 2025
DigitalService opens its doors for the first Demo Day and welcomes over 100 guests from administration and politics. Together with our project partners, we present the results of our collaboration to date. At the panel discussion “Bug fixing or system update? What we need now for a digital Germany”, experts talk about the next steps for a strong digital state: Moderator Ann Cathrin Riedel, Managing Director of NExT e.V. Stefanie Kaste, Deputy Managing Director of Initiative D21; Luukas Ilves, digital politician and former CIO of Estonia; Christina Lang, CEO of DigitalService; Julia Jäkel, media manager and co-initiator of the non-partisan “Initiative für einen handlungsfähigen Staat”; and Dr. André Göbel, President of FITKO (from left). Further insights into Demo Day.
November 2024
The “Digital Legal Petition Office” team wins the “Prize for Good Administration 2024”! The project team accepted the award as one of three winning projects at the Public Service Lab Day in Leipzig. The jury of experts was particularly impressed by the human-centered development process, in which both citizens and court employees are involved.
September 2024
The 5th anniversary year of the Work4Germany fellowship starts with 14 fellows working on various projects in the federal administration. The focus is on digital transformation and modern working methods that help to change the way, we work together on complex social challenges.
May 2024
The DigitalService team has now grown to over 150 employees. A reason to come together and celebrate.
September 2023
The 4th Work4Germany cohort starts with 20 fellows working on 19 selected projects. For the first time, these have two thematic focuses: They are either digitalization projects or deal with ministerial legislative preparation.
The Federal Ministry of Justice and the team “Digitale Rechtsantragstelle (Digital Legal Application Office)” launch a beta version of a first online service for legal aid. On the website “Justiz-Services – Rechtsinformationen und digitale Anwendungen” (Justice Services – Legal Information and Digital Applications), citizens can find information and tips on how to apply and use a simple tool to check in advance whether they are entitled to legal aid.
August 2021
The team continues to grow and moves from a co-working space to its first own office in Berlin Kreuzberg.
August 2023
The German federal cabinet decides on key points for Digitalcheck (German only) and thus underlines that digital-ready laws are essential for the successful digital implementation of political projects. It is particularly innovative that instead of defining measures and solutions in advance, the cabinet agrees on an iterative, user-centric method and a cross-departmental approach – as practiced by the Digitalcheck team since the start of the project.
January 2023
The Digitalcheck, which we are developing in cooperation with the BMI, is being applied to new regulatory projects at the federal level. It sets the basic conditions for new laws to be digitally implementable in the future.
November 2022
The BundesIdent app is integrated into the online service “Grundsteuererklärung für Privateigentum” as an identification option – in addition to the ELSTER account or an activation code by letter. By the end of January 2023, the share of identifications with BundesIdent will increase to 19.9%.
October 2022
Once again, more than 300 guests from politics, administration, media & digitalization accept our invitation to the Tech4Germany & Work4Germany closing event. The results of 38 projects in 16 federal ministries and agencies are presented.
September 2022
Virtually and on site in our office in Berlin we come together to celebrate that our team at DigitalService has now grown to over 100 employees.
August 2022
The 5th Tech4Germany year starts with more than 60 fellows and project partners. Together they will work on eight projects for three months.
May 2022
The 3rd Work4Germany cohort starts with a record participation of 30 fellows and change projects in 13 ministries and federal agencies.
"DigitalService4Germany GmbH" becomes "DigitalService GmbH des Bundes".
October 2021
Chancellor Merkel pays a virtual farewell visit to DigitalService.
October 2021
Tech4Germany and Work4Germany closing event with more than 300 guests from politics, administration, media and digitalization. Presentation of the results from 27 projects in 19 federal ministries and agencies.
July 2021
Start of the 4th Tech4Germany cycle with 28 fellows and digital projects in 7 federal ministries and agencies.
May 2021
Start of the 2nd Work4Germany year with 20 fellows and change projects in 12 ministries and federal agencies. For the first time, with “Re-designing ministerial legislative preparation” a cross-departmental project is set up .
July 2020
Tech4Germany year 3 with 32 fellows and 6 ministries.
June 2020
Federal president Frank Walter Steinmeier and Elke Büdenbender visit Tech4Germany and Work4Germany during the German Digital Day.
May 2020
Work4Germany year 1 with 10 fellows and 10 ministries.
November 2019
Tech4Germany presentation in front of all members of cabinets in Meseberg.
October 2019
Tech4Germany final presentation in front of 400 guests.
August 2019
Sonja Anton, Christina Lang and Andrej Safundzic found 4Germany UG and secure state funding.
July 2019
First conceptual draft for Work4Germany by Christina and proposal to the Federal Chancellery.
September 2018
Tech4Germany final presentations in front of the Head of the Federal Chancellery and Ministers of State.
June 2018
Tech4Germany year 1 with 9 fellows and 2 projects under the patronage of the Head of the Federal Chancellery Helge Braun.
Supervisory Board
Markus Richter
Dr. Markus Richter is a fully qualified lawyer. After working at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees in the areas of personnel, organization, at the President's Office, and in the area of policy issues, he became Group Head of IT at the Federal Office of Administration (Bundesverwaltungsamt) and, in 2018, Head of Department for Infrastructure and IT as well as CIO at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. In 2018, he became Vice President at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and then, in May 2020, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior, for Construction and Home Affairs and Federal Government Commissioner for Information Technology. He has been State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Digitalization and Government Modernization since May 2025. He is Chairman of the Supervisory Board.
Julia Kloiber
Julia Elisabeth Kloiber holds a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences degree from the University of Applied Sciences Joanneum in Graz (Austria), with a focus on Information Design, and a Master of Arts from Utrecht University (The Netherlands), with a focus on New Media and Digital Culture. She founded the Germany-wide civic tech network Code for Germany and initiated the BMBF-funded Prototype Fund – she led both as Director until 2018. Since 2018, she has been a Senior Fellow at the Mozilla Foundation, focusing on future technologies and open source. Finally, in 2019, she founded Superrr Lab gGmbH, for which she now functions as the Managing Director. The institution researches the challenges and opportunities of new technologies for society.
Peter Parycek
Prof. Dr. Peter Parycek is an advisory member of the Board of Directors of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb) and, as Head of Transformation and Digital Change, is responsible for the broadcaster's strategic realignment and digitalization. Since 2017, he has led the Competence Center Public IT (German: ÖFIT) at the Fraunhofer FOKUS Institute in Berlin, funded by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community. He has been a university professor of e-governance since 2015 and heads the Department of E-Governance in Business and Administration. From 2021 to February 2025, he served as Vice Rector for Teaching, Continuing Education, and Digital Transformation (CDO) at the University for Continuing Education Krems. From 2018 to 2022, he was a member of the Federal Government's Digital Council.
Tabea Roessner
Tabea Roessner has been a member of the German Bundestag for “Bündnis 90/Die Grünen” from 2009 until 2025. The politician dedicated herself early on to topics related to new media, the internet, and digital society and was a deputy member of the Digital Agenda Committee in the past two legislative periods. She has chaired the Digital Affairs Committee since December 2021. Before moving into politics, the Humanities graduate worked as a freelance journalist, author, and editor for ZDF, RTL, and various magazines.
Stefan Schnorr
Stefan Schnorr has been State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Transport (BMV) since December 2021. Before joining the BMV, he was Head of the “Digital and Innovation Policy” department at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Stefan Schnorr is a trained lawyer and began his career as an administrative judge in Trier. In 1994, he moved into administration. Digital topics did accompany him since 2010 when he took over the management of the “Information Society, Media” subdivision and later the “Budget, Personnel, Organization, Information Technology (CIO)” subdivision in the then Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.
Heike Zirden
Heike Zirden joined the Federal Chancellery in March 2022 as a group leader in Department 6, where she is responsible for fundamental issues of transformation and digital policy and social dialogue. Previously, she established and managed the Digitale Arbeitsgesellschaft (Digital Labor Society) think tank at the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. The think tank tested new forms of collaboration and developed innovative solutions for the future of the digital working society.
Thomas Rieks
Thomas Rieks holds a degree in Business Administration with additional relevant degrees, namely a Master of Science degree in Money, Banking and Finance (University of Birmingham), and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA Institute, Viginia, USA). Before working as a Government Director and Deputy Dead of Division at the Federal Ministry of Finance, he worked as an Acquirer and Analyst at Landeskreditbank Baden-Württemberg, as an Analyst at Rentenbank (Frankfurt) specializing in corporate finance, and as a Credit Manager, Analyst and Authorized Signatory at DekaBank (Frankfurt).