The motivation – the challenge – the solution , Date: 2023.03.27, format: Article, area: Authority

The asylum procedure in the Federal Republic of Germany requires close cooperation between various authorities at the federal, state (“Bundesländer”) and municipal levels. In order for these authorities to work together efficiently, they must be able to exchange various information and data in a reliable manner. The result is a complex network of communication between the authorities which are involved in the asylum procedure.

A particular challenge in the exchange of information and data emerges from the fact that the authorities involved use their own IT applications in order to carry out the tasks that fall into their areas of responsibility. Most of these IT applications are only able to communicate with one another and exchange data to a limited extent.

The BAMF and its partner authorities are trying to resolve these challenges via a variety of overarching IT solutions and standards. This for instance includes the Central Register of Foreigners as a joint central database for storing specific master data and documents, or the XAusländer standard for exchanging standardised messages.

However, there is not yet an overarching IT solution for coordinating the asylum procedure at the BAMF’s individual locations. Instead, each location has individual communication processes and approaches, frequently involving exchanging paper documents or Excel files via e-mail. These however make the joint completion of the procedure inconvenient, highly time consuming and prone to error.

“Decentralised” workflow management systems offer a potential solution for further improving the coordination of the joint completion of the asylum procedure at the BAMF’s individual locations. These systems however frequently focus on the automated management of workflows, whilst the federal distribution of responsibilities and competences prohibits automation spanning authorities, and the monitoring of processes at a supra-organisational level.

Against this background, the BAMF uses blockchain technology in order to support communication and cooperation between authorities by means of a decentralised exchange of information on the status of asylum procedures. The BAMF is also focussing the combination of the different IT and process landscapes at the locations via a federal asylum blockchain infrastructure (FLORA), and via an support system based on FLORA.