Work4Germany & Tech4Germany: Federal Government Fellowship Programs Start New Legislature with Record Participation

The Tech4Germany fellowship program has been bringing the benefits of modern product development to life in concrete digital projects since 2018. For this purpose, talented people, experts from the fields of product, design and engineering work together with digitalization makers from federal agencies for three months. Through user research and prototyping, the teams create new insights from week 1 and develop digital prototypes that address challenges of the federal ministries and agencies with user-centric solution approaches. Together, Tech4Germany thus strengthens the administration's competence for good digital product development. Tech4Germany is run by the federally owned digitalization unit DigitalService.

Work4Germany is a fellowship program that has been bringing together methodologically strong transformation experts (called “fellows”) from the private sector with employees from federal ministries and top federal agencies since 2020. During the six-month fellowship, the teams work on cross-divisional challenges, redesign workflows, and focus on iterative and user-centered ways of working in projects in the context of administrative digitalization. Methods are understood as tools – even beyond the fellowship. This opens up new scope of action and design and creates very tangible benefits for managers, teams, projects and processes. With Work4Germany, DigitalService is driving the transformation of work culture at the federal level from within. The teams are supported by an experienced fellowship team and tailored exchange formats.

As the central digitalization unit of the German federal government, DigitalService has set itself the task of sustainably advancing the digitalization of Germany and establishing agile software development and user-centered design as the standard in public administration.

Together with the federal administration, it develops user-centered digital services that measurably improve the interaction between individuals and the state. Through the Tech4Germany and Work4Germany fellowship programs, the in-house unit brings external digital experts and change experts to the federal ministries for several months to experience the benefits of new working methods and improve the implementation of digitalization projects.

DigitalService was established as a federally owned limited liability company in October 2020 and is wholly owned by the federal government. It emerged from the non-profit start-up 4Germany, which was founded in 2019.