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 digitalization partner for public administration, DigitalService has set itself the goal of sustainably advancing the digital transformation of Germany. The aim is is to make user-centered digital services the standard in public administration.

To achieve this, DigitalService works closely with the federal government to develop and operate innovative digital solutions through interdisciplinary teams while establishing the necessary foundations. Even before DigitalService was founded, the Tech4Germany and Work4Germany fellowship programs brought technical and methodological expertise to the administration, helping to bring the benefits of new working methods to life and improve the implementation of digitalization projects.

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