📋 Tender Overview
Germany has been honored in Dubai at the World Government Summit for its use of artificial intelligence in administration. An agency AI that massively accelerates planning and approval processes for infrastructure projects while relieving employees in administration was awarded in the category Best Use of AI in Government Services. The AI was developed by the Federal Ministry for Digital and State Modernization (BMDS) and initiated and financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE) as the responsible department for building hydrogen infrastructure in Germany. Federal Digital Minister Dr. Karsten Wildberger accepted the award on behalf of Germany.
Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Katherina Reiche: This award shows the potential of an intelligently modernized administration. With the AI platform we significantly accelerate complex approval processes and create better conditions for central infrastructure projects - especially for the development of the hydrogen economy. The crucial point is: The state becomes faster more efficient and simultaneously relieves its employees. In this way we strengthen Germanys economic capacity to act in international competition.
Federal Minister for Digital and State Modernization Dr. Karsten Wildberger: This award underscores: Germany can play in the top league with AI in administration. Our technical solution uses so-called agency AI and shortens processes that currently take months to just days. We will now make this technology available as open-source code and gradually offer it for reuse in the country. This creates a blueprint for the use of artificial intelligence in approval processes and simultaneously strengthens our digital sovereignty.
Massive acceleration of approval processes
The award-winning solution is a universal agency AI developed for planning and approval processes for the hydrogen core network and can be trained on different legal areas of planning and approval law as well as other legal fields making it universally applicable. An initial focus is on complex infrastructure projects where previously case workers had to manually review hundreds of pages of application documents over weeks or months.
Instead the AI analyzes application documents in a few hours structures the content checks whether required evidence is available and creates well-founded decision proposals for processing. The decision itself remains with the responsible employees ensuring that legal responsibility and discretion remain clearly in human hands in compliance with the law.
AI agents are already in use
Initial agents of the award-winning AI solution are already in use in the Hanseatic city of Hamburg for the approval of hydrogen core network lines. Currently further modules of the agency AI are being integrated into approval processes for applications under the Federal Immission Control Act (BImSchG) in North Rhine-Westphalia for the purpose of scaling. At the same time an implementation project is underway with the Federal Highway Office.
BMWE and BMDS will gradually provide the AI agents as an open-source solution enabling broad reuse in federal state and municipal levels. What is developed once should have multiple effects and thus become a blueprint for accelerating complex approval processes.
