[en] Developing and deploying intergovernmental IT systems across layers of government (e.g., state and federal) is challenging because the law requires cooperation but also mandates that each layer has its own separate IT systems. We describe how Germany successfully navigated the challenges when it implemented FLORA, a blockchain-based system that supports the processing of asylum seekers. Based on insights gained from FLORA, we provide three recommendations for successfully implementing intergov ernmental IT systems.1,2
Research center :
Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) > FINATRAX - Digital Financial Services and Cross-organizational Digital Transformations
Disciplines :
Management information systems Computer science
Author, co-author :
Amend, Julia; FIM Research Center, Branch Business & Information Systems Engineering of Fraunhofer FIT, University of Bayreuth, Germany
Feulner, Simon; FIM Research Center, Branch Business & Information Systems Engineering of Fraunhofer FIT, University of Bayreuth, Germany ; Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Rieger, Alexander; University of Arkansas, United States
ROTH, Tamara ; University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust > FINATRAX > Team Gilbert FRIDGEN ; University of Arkansas, United States
FRIDGEN, Gilbert ; University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT) > FINATRAX
Guggenberger, Tobias; FIM Research Center, Branch Business & Information Systems Engineering of Fraunhofer FIT, University of Bayreuth, Germany
External co-authors :
yes
Language :
English
Title :
How Germany Successfully Implemented Its Intergovernmental FLORA System
Publication date :
2025
Journal title :
MIS Quarterly Executive
ISSN :
1540-1960
eISSN :
1540-1979
Publisher :
Association for Information Systems
Volume :
24
Issue :
1
Pages :
67 - 78
Peer reviewed :
Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi
Focus Area :
Security, Reliability and Trust
Development Goals :
9. Industry, innovation and infrastructure 10. Reduced inequalities
Funding text :
Our research was funded in part by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) and PayPal, PEARL (grant reference 13342933/Gilbert Fridgen).
3 See for, example: 1) Bui, Q. N. “Increasing the Relevance of Enterprise Architecture through “Crisitunities” in U.S. State Governments,” MIS Quarterly Executive (14:4), December 2015, pp. 169-179; and 2) Kim, S. L. and Teo, T. “Lessons for Software Development Ecosystems: South Korea’s e-Government Open Source Initiative,” MIS Quarterly Executive (12:2), June 2013, pp. 93-108.
4 For information on the United States’ federal IT spending, see The Federal IT Dashboard, General Services Administration, available at https://itdashboard.gov/.
5 Insights into the challenges of government IT projects can be found in: Pahlka, J. Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better, Metropolitan Books, 2023.
6 For more details, see Asylum Figures for the Entire Year and December 2024, Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, January 2025, available at https://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Meldungen/DE/2025/250109-asylzahlen-dezember-und-gesamtjahr-2024.html?nn=282600.
7 For a description of the procedure, see The Stages of the Asylum Procedure, Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, available at https://www.bamf.de/EN/Themen/AsylFluechtlingsschutz/AblaufAsylverfahrens/ablaufasylverfahrens-node.html
8 For details on data processing in Germany’s asylum procedure, see: https://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/EN/EMN/Studien/wp90-datenmanagement.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=1.
9 For more details on these initiatives, see Digitisation Agenda 2022, Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, available at https://www.bamf-digitalisierungsagenda.de/en/.
10 For more details on the AZR, see Data Collection: The Management of the Central Register of Foreigners, Federal Office or Migration and Refugees, available at https://www.bamf.de/EN/Behoerde/Aufgaben/Datenerhebung/datenerhebung-node.html.
11 Deeper insights into why private blockchains are suitable for Germany’s asylum procedure can be found in Roth, T., Stohr, A., Amend, J., Fridgen, G. and Rieger, A. “Blockchain as a Driving Force for Federalism: A Theory of Cross-Organizational Task-Technology Fit,” International Journal of Information Management (68), Article 102476, February 2023.
12 The potential value is detailed in a proof-of-concept whitepaper: Fridgen, G., Guggenmos, F., Lockl, J., Rieger, A. and Urbach, N. Supporting Communication and Cooperation in the Asylum Procedure with Blockchain Technology: A Proof of Concept by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, 2019.
13 For details of the pilot project, see Amend, J., Arnold, L., Fabri, L., Feulner, S., Fridgen, G., Harzer, L., Karnebogen, P., Koehler, F., Ollig, P., Rieger, A., Schellinger, B., and Schmidbauer-Wolf, G.-M., Federal Blockchain Infrastructure Asylum (FLORA)—Piloting and Evaluation of the FLORA Support System in the Context of the AnkER Facility Dresden, Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, November 1, 2023.
14 Further insights into these challenges and the Federal Office’s solution strategy can be found in Rieger, A., Lockl, J., Urbach, N., Guggenmos, F. and Fridgen, G. “Building a Blockchain Application that Complies with the EU General Data Protection Regulation,” MIS Quarterly Executive (18:4), December 2019, pp, 263-279.
15 FLORA includes both overarching status messages and sub-process status messages. Overarching messages map the procedural logic defined by the Federal Asylum Act (and thus are the same in all of Germany’s 16 states) and subprocess messages reflect local differences in the asylum procedure.
16 To ensure that an asylum procedure can be initially identified by the FLORA system, several identification attributes are transmitted from the backend system of the submitting agency, together with the first status message (e.g., date of birth, personal number, application number). The FLORA ID is then generated by the BIS of the submitting agency and exchanged with the responsible partner agencies. These agencies then use their own BISs to map the FLORA ID with the IDs in their backend systems.
17 The status messages are “tamper evident” (i.e., resistant to tampering) because all blockchain components also hold a copy of the hash values (“fingerprints”) of all status messages written by the participating agencies.
18 Status messages are distributed and stored in so-called “private data collections.” These collections are special elements of the Hyperledger Fabric framework and allow status messages to be shared with a specific subset of participating agencies. All other agencies receive only a hash value of the status message.
19 As responsibilities in the asylum procedure are clearly delineated and agencies do not have a legal basis for cross-validation, the blockchain component does not employ a consensus mechanism but a simple ordering mechanism.
20 For more information on case study research, see Yin, R. Case Study Research: Design and Methods, SAGE Publications, 2017.
