How Germany's FLORA System Became the Blueprint for Intergovernmental IT Success

Lately, governments have invested significant resources in modernizing government IT. In 2024, for instance, the U.S. federal government had an IT budget of $98.1 billion, earmarking $29.1 billion for major investments. However, investments like this do not always lead to the secure and efficient services that governments envision.

Problems especially exist where services require cooperation across multiple levels of government, but the law separates competencies, budgets, and IT for each level. This creates multilayered and complex IT architectures, complicating information exchange and modernization.

Despite these difficulties, governments can bridge the system divide by following in Germany’s footsteps. Their successful implementation of a blockchain-based system for processing asylum seekers, referred to as the “Federal Blockchain Infrastructure Asylum” (FLORA), is an insightful example. FLORA significantly improved the quality of information, reduced processing time, minimized errors and data privacy challenges, and streamlines the asylum procedure.

How did Germany do this so successfully, and how can other countries do the same?

To answer this, Walton College’s Tamara Roth and Alexander Rieger, along with Julia Amend (University of Bayreuth), Simon Feulner (University of Bayreuth and Frankfurt University), Gilbert Fridgen (University of Luxembourg), and Tobias Guggenberger (University of Bayreuth) explore how FLORA overcame the challenges of intergovernmental IT projects in their research, “How Germany Successfully Implemented Its Intergovernmental FLORA System.” The researchers describe FLORA’s architecture and governance and provide three crucial recommendations for building intergovernmental IT systems.

Overcoming Intergovernmental IT System Challenges

In 2024 alone, Germany processed around 352,000 asylum applications throughout its 16 states. Especially during the initial stages of the procedure, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and the country’s state-level migration agencies have to collaborate closely to register asylum seekers and conduct asylum interviews. The initial stages also require coordination with health agencies, translation service providers for interviews, and law enforcement services for background checks and repatriation facilitation.

Before FLORA’s implementation, most asylum cases involved Excel-based lists that were manually filled and exchanged by email. This was both time-consuming and error-prone. To avoid the challenges of implementing a centralized IT architecture across multiple levels of government, FLORA adopted a decentralized design focused on data sharing, eliminating the need for new legislation and substantial standardization costs. Core benefits of FLORA include:

1. Improving the efficiency of logging, sharing, and tracking procedural data. FLORA provides a "shared source of truth" for asylum cases to address integrity and transparency concerns. “In the future, we should no longer copy data into large nationwide databases,” the Federal Office’s then-vice president said. “Rather, we should leave the data where we collect it and use a logging layer to make transparent when and where status changes occurred. With a lightweight blockchain solution, we can more easily implement this logging layer than with an expansion of the existing and already complex IT solutions.”

2. Complying with strict privacy and security requirements in several ways. FLORA builds on a joint data processing agreement, which creates a clear legal framework for data sharing between the agencies. Then, with a pseudonymization solution, it implements strong safeguards to reduce unauthorized access. Additionally, FLORA offers strong IT security measures that go way beyond standard security policies for protecting infrastructure and data flow.

3. Navigating the limited resources, capabilities, and interests of state-level agencies. To account for state-level constraints, FLORA has a flexible hosting model. More specifically, the Federal Office offers the states different hosting options, ranging from self-hosting of a FLORA instance to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model that offers access through application programming interfaces (APIs) and frontends. This led to the successful pilot in 2021 and an ongoing, nationwide rollout.

Architecture and Governance

Each instance, or FLORA application, has an integration services layer and a blockchain platform layer, which together distribute status and procedure information as a "shared source of truth" in secure, timely, and reliable ways.

The integration services layer links backend systems and the frontend with the blockchain, translating API calls into status messages. For example, when the Federal Office conducts an ID check of an applicant, its backend system creates a FLORA API call, and its FLORA instance then distributes a “ID check completed” status message to the agencies involved with the specific application. As for the blockchain platform layer, it distributes and stores these messages, utilizing smart contracts for basic validation and a privacy service for pseudonymization.

Most state-level agencies initially opt for the SaaS model, where they contribute requirements, suggest changes, and participate in prioritizing new features for their FLORA instance. The Federal Office, on the other hand, handles lower-level prioritization and covers technical development and hosting costs. The Federal Office also ensures that state-level concerns are met by support teams, office hours, and feedback sessions. “Once the initial ‘honeymoon’ phase is over," they then push for more state-level responsibility and cost sharing.

A Path Forward

FLORA users describe the system as a powerful tool that improves daily operations in four specific areas. These include the sharing of procedural information, the quality of procedural information, the procedure timeline, and legal compliance. With FLORA, they have instantaneous application status and progress updates, a “shared source of truth” with complete, accurate, and up-to-date information, reduced waiting and search times, and minimized procedural errors.

Based on FLORA’s success, the researchers offer three recommendations for successfully implementing intergovernmental IT systems:

1. Determine the suitability of decentralized over centralized solutions: a decentralized solution like FLORA avoids the hidden costs of centralized systems by not requiring new legislation or extensive standardization.

2. Implement modular solutions that break up complex, multilayered legacy architectures, which are difficult to adapt. This enables easier maintenance and updates, as well as leveraging efficient data exchange rather than replication.

3. Start with a SaaS model and gradually transition to a flexible integration model. With this, a single agency temporarily leads development and funding, which lowers adoption barriers for the other agencies and allows them to decide the desired level of integration and resource allocation.

FLORA’s success is defined by its ability to bridge legally separated systems to support and coordinate better application processing for Germany by moving on from the manual, Excel-based lists exchanged over email. By doing so, it improves information exchange and quality, reduces processing times, and minimizes errors and privacy violations.

Roth and Rieger’s research can teach the rest of the world how to do the same.