Germany de.indymedia
GovTech Germany: Well connected, poorly screened
GovTech Germany has been good for gossip for a long time: public contracts are awarded without a tender and with the Germany platform, the association is building a competing product to the Germany stack
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GovTech Germany has been good for gossip for a long time: public contracts are awarded without tendering and with the Germany platform, the association is building a competing product to the federal government's Germany stack. This is now also confirmed by the federal government's answers to a request from the Greens.
“You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.” A popular phrase among people who want to digitize public administration. Not every administration or authority has to think of its own IT solutions for processes. The federal and state governments want to save money and resources by working together on basic components. There are committees in which the federal and state governments plan together, such as the IT Planning Council and the Federal IT Cooperation (FITKO). Your long-term goal: invest together in a unified IT ecosystem.
However, this delicate relationship between the federal and state governments appears to have been disrupted for a few years. The disruptive factor: an association that Markus Richter (CDU), then Federal CIO, now State Secretary in the Digital Ministry,https://www.focused.fraunhofer.de/de/dps/news/govtech_campus_2021_06.html"...foundedhas: GovTech Germany, formerly GovTech Campus.
The founding goal of the association was to bring authorities together with the start-up scene and with tech companies. In thehttps://www.gov.tech/ueber-uns">Board of Directorsand PresidiumOnly state secretaries, ministers and digital politicians sit there, some of them formerly in high positions. There is Nadine Schön, for example, who was deputy chairwoman of the Union parliamentary group at the time of the traffic light coalition.
https://www.gov.tech/members">OrdinarymembersIn addition to some of the countries, there is also FITKO, that ishttps://www.pd-g.de/">Consulting companyP.Das a consultant to the public sector and GovTech Kommunal, one of GovTech's subsidiaries. There are also over 170https://www.gov.tech/members">Fsupporting members, including numerous tech companies. The association is financed through members' contributions. These amount to either 25,000 euros or 50,000 euros per year.
Club stirs up rumor mill
The association's work has been stirring up the rumor mill for a long time. Since autumn 2025 at the latest, questions have arisen about how the club actually operates. How are the association's developments related to those of the federal government? At that time, Ammar Alkassar, one of the board members, explained that GovTech wanted to build “the central technology platform for the state and administration.”
Companies can place orders through a GovTech subsidiary, GovTech Platforms GmbH. However, the federal government says it does not know what orders these are or what volume they cover. She explains this in herhttps://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2026/11/answer-govtech-KA.pdf">An...on onehttps://dip.bundestag.de/verfahren/engagement-der-bundesregierung-im-govte...Request from the Greens. Since 2024, GovTech Platforms has awarded contracts to a total of 114 companies and institutions, including four companies outside the European Union. “GovTech Deutschland and GovTech Platforms GmbH award contracts regardless of membership in the association,” it says.
The federal government's ignorance is not the only thing that surprises Moritz Heuberger from the Greens, co-author of the Small Question. The federal government not only leads the executive board, but also, according to its own statement, "has a shared right to give instructions right up to the GmbH. Nevertheless, it knows neither the salaries of the operational managing directors nor the volume of orders from member companies," said Heuberger in his press statement to the federal government's response.
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Germany here, Germany there
In fact, the association runs a project called the Germany Platform. The choice of name alone is likely to cause confusion. The major project of the Federal Ministry for Digital and State Modernization (BMDS) is called Germany Stack, so confusion is inevitable. Also the projecthttps://marktplatz.gov.de">MarketplaceGermany Digital(MDD) seems to want to compete with Alkassar.
The MDD is a joint project between FITKO, the IT Planning Council and Govdigital and has been in operation since this year. Among other things, it is intended to bundle the German administration cloud and the “Fit Store” in one place. The idea: Administrations should be able to find and reuse IT solutions there without having to go through the effort of developing their own solution.
Here, Green Party member Moritz Heuberger sees a clear danger of parallel developments and is calling on the federal government to take a position. Alkassar has a clear goal, but the federal government has “no clear stance” on this.
“No competition”
Instead, the federal government vaguely distances itself from GovTech's Germany platform in its response. Explains that it is a “development and operating environment on which digital management applications are operated and made available for reuse.” It is “a possible offer” on the Germany Digital marketplace.
GovTech wants to make applications from the Germany platform available via the marketplace and is cooperating with FITKO to this end. The federal government therefore sees “no competitive relationship between the Germany platform and the Deutschland Digital marketplace”.
When asked by the Greens whether the Germany platform of GovTech Platforms GmbH is congruent with the Germany stack, the federal government does not want to recognize any competitive relationship with the development project of the BMDS and IT Planning Council. Their “concern” is simply that “the offers correspond to the specifications and standards of the Germany stack”.
Orders without tender
However, the financing of the Germany platform raises questions. Harald Wehnes from the Gesellschaft für Informatik considers GovTech to be the “central onehttps://pak-digs.gi.de/mitteil/frag-den-staat-bmds-der-bescheid-war-e...for all public IT”.
This is made possible by the so-called in-house capability. Contracts are awarded to a government contractor without an official tender. It is well known that public clients, such as ministries, approach GovTech in this way. It is generally not unusual to award contracts without a tender. She is according to thehttps://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gwb/__108.html">Lawagainst restrictions on competitionalso possible.
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But since the association was founded, it has been unclear whether all the requirements for in-house capability have been met. According to public procurement law, the requirement would be that the client controls the association or that it essentially only works for the client, such as the relevant ministry.
In its response, the federal government quotes the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). According to the BMZ, GovTech itself has submitted a report on this. Accordingly, the requirements are met. The Foreign Office and the Research Ministry also examined and came to the same conclusion. On the other hand, the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV) does not see the requirements as being met. According to Tagesspiegel Background, the BMJV now has this statementhttps://background.tagesspiegel.de/digitalisierung-und-ki/briefing/nicht...(€). They are “not fundamentally against in-house capability”.
Unclear and opaque
Meanwhile, the BMDS is still checking. Still, one would have to say, because the ministry has had a corresponding one since September 2025https://fragdenstaat.de/anfrage/govtech-campus-finanz-inhousefaehi...by Harald Wehnes.
Although the in-house capability has not yet been conclusively clarified, the association continues to award public contracts. In May, for example, the IT system house receivedhttps://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechtle_AG">Bechtlethehttps://www.bechtle.com/ueber-bechtle/newsroom/customer-success/2026/bec...for a framework contract with GovTech, order volume up to 250 million euros. Bechtle is supposed to deliver cloud and AI services for federal, state and local governments.
“Nobody disputes that administration and the tech industry need places to exchange ideas and procurement needs to become faster,” says Moritz Heuberger. But GovTech's activities are not transparent. “I expect the federal government to provide complete transparency about procurement and contracts with GovTech.”
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