In order for the federal government, the federal administration body and the state administrations to fulfil their tasks, they must work together. To this end, authorities and organisations must be able to communicate and exchange data with each other – securely and reliably at all times. This is enabled by the federal government’s own networks.

The federal government’s networks are a uniform IT infrastructure. Its purpose is to facilitate communication between the federal government and the administration. Data, voice, video – users can transmit all these forms of data between the connected facilities in this way. This is what makes digital collaboration between federal authorities possible in the first place.
And the special thing about it: The network infrastructures and the functions offered via them are characterised by a very high availability. And they fulfil the highest security standards. This means that even sensitive information can be transmitted without any issue.

The federal networks emerged from several state predecessor networks that were set up and operated by different agencies: the Berlin-Bonn Information Network (IVBB) and the Federal Administration Information Network/Federal Administration Network (IVBV/BVN).

In order to unify and consolidate these various networks, a project group in the Federal Ministry of the Interior has defined the requirements for the government network together with the user authorities and the Federal Office for Information Security.

As the network operator, we have been responsible for operating the federal government’s networks since 2019. We are also advancing the continued consolidation and transformation of the networks. We ensure their performance, availability and integrity together with our partner authorities and organisations.

The federal government’s networks in figures

The federal networks form the digital communication network of government and administration throughout Germany:

• the federal networks possess roughly 200 connected federal authorities and network interfaces to state and municipal networks.
• More than 300,000 employees are connected to the federal government’s networks.
• The average network availability is 99.95% – this corresponds to a downtime of less than one minute per day.
• The connection network can also be used to connect facilities at federal state and local authority level to the federal networks.

A common network for Germany’s entire public administration

In the long term, we will continue to develop and expand the federal government’s networks – into a public administration information network – abbreviated in German as: “IVÖV”. In doing so, we are creating a network alliance: on the one hand, the federal, state and local government institutions and, on the other, the providers of specialised IT processes. The network will facilitate a common basis for secure communication across all levels.

Would you like to know more about the federal networks? You can find further information on our German website – including information on the hierarchy and structure, organisation and operation, as well as user locations and services.