The public administration information network, abbreviated in German as: “IVÖV”, is a key objective of the Network Strategy 2030. The IVÖV will create a powerful, future-proof and economical IT infrastructure that will connect Germany’s entire public administration and enable needs-based, consistently available and highly secure communication. This is not merely an expansion stage of the federal government’s own networks. Instead, we are creating a new, independent network infrastructure.

The network will not only enable federal administration authorities and state and local government institutions to communicate and exchange data, but also administrative organisations, service providers and external partners. More than 10,000 properties are to be connected to the IVÖV.

In future, all public administration wide area networks will be merged into the IVÖV. These include not only today’s [federal networks] and the federal-state-local authority interconnection network, but also the foreign IT networks operated by the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) and other specialised state networks.

Federal states and local authorities can choose to connect their networks to the IVÖV via secure network interfaces, or have them operated directly by the IVÖV. External data networks from business and science-oriented sectors, or from partners abroad, can also be connected to the IVÖV via secure network transitions.

The technical core area for IVÖV is the federal core transport network, to be extended by the addition of high-performance infrastructures. There are also plans to link it to the Federal Armed Forces’s core network – the so-called “CoreBWI”.

The role of the BDBOS

As the federal government’s network operator, we are responsible for the construction and operational management of the IVÖV. We not only ensure the availability of the IT infrastructures themselves. We also provide network services, such as the network-related services used to monitor, manage and control infrastructure. We also ensure the crisis-proof connection of ministries, authorities and administration-related organisations to the IVÖV at federal level.

In close cooperation with the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), we also ensure IT security at IVÖV. A security architecture designed jointly with the BSI is utilised that can withstand professional cyber attacks.

A high-performance network

The public administration information network offers numerous advantages.
The IVÖV ...

• promotes secure, digital and cross-level cooperation – not only within government and administration, but also with business and science-oriented sectors, as well as society
• offers a high-performance IT infrastructure and is future-proof in the long term thanks to the use of standardised technologies
• promotes information security and data protection by providing the federal and state governments with a fail-safe basic network that is effectively protected against cyberattacks
• strengthens national digital sovereignty, the capacity to act and freedom of decision
• ensures a high level of economic efficiency by bundling user requirements and utilising synergy effects.