When plans were originally made to implement a mobile, secure IT infrastructure at the BAMF it had nothing to do with the idea of home working. It was actually in 2015 that the need arose in connection with the refugee crisis. Over the course of 2015 the BAMF registered around 890,000 protection seekers who had entered Germany. Personnel numbers were increased significantly. The BAMF employees who served in the initial reception centres at the EU’s external borders needed an IT infrastructure that they could use to process and transmit sensitive information such as personal data.

To meet this requirement, secunet installed a SINA solution with 1,500 SINA Workstations, achieving this in just a few weeks because time was an especially valuable resource at that point given the situation. “A large meeting room at the BAMF was re-purposed as an installation office,” recalls Norbert Müller, Head of the Public Authorities Division at secunet. “We had to proceed with the utmost pragmatism in order to keep to the tight timings.” The SINA Workstations were integrated into cases that held the most important devices for registering the refugees, such as fingerprint scanners and document readers. This made it possible to process the data collected directly and transmit it securely.

Growth goes hand in hand with IT challenges
The increased workload caused by the refugee crisis was soon also extremely noticeable within the administrative and core areas of the BAMF. The federal authority therefore had to adopt a number of measures to fulfil the new requirements and tackle the volume of work. These measures included further growth in personnel numbers and streamlining work processes.

The legislator authorised approximately 7,800 positions at the BAMF for 2018 and around 8,100 for 2019. This means there will be a permanent workforce of over 8,000 at the BAMF. Compared to the number of employees prior to 2014 this equates to almost a fourfold increase.

Additionally, employees’ expectations are changing: in today’s world of work, attractive working conditions are becoming increasingly important. As a higher federal authority, the BAMF is obligated to improve the family-friendly nature of the organisation and ensure that family life and professional life are compatible. The federal office’s IT plays a key role in all these developments.

This gives rise to a further challenge though, in that a very high level of security is needed. Employees’ computers sometimes hold sovereign data that it is especially important to protect, for example information on politically persecuted asylum seekers.

Officials at the BAMF quickly realised that SINA would be an answer to these challenges and enable employees to work from home or other locations – which was very popular with employees.

Same solution, new objective
For this and other reasons, when the maintenance contract expired in 2019 the federal authority decided to keep SINA and install a refresh together with updates. This brought the installation fully up to date and outdated components were replaced.

Then, in spring 2020, the coronavirus crisis suddenly raised its ugly head. While many federal authorities and businesses were forced to take their first steps towards mobile working while under huge time pressure, the BAMF was among those organisations that were already one step ahead of the game. The SINA solution was already proving a success. Now, the obvious thing to do was to expand it.

According to Kausik Munsi, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the BAMF, there were four reasons why the authority chose to keep SINA: “Firstly, we had to find a partner who could be completely trusted to deliver, since it was also about trust. Secondly, the technology itself was important to us of course, and SINA was both highly secure – as confirmed by the BSI approval – as well as, and this is the third point, very easy to use. Fourthly, we had a flexible framework agreement that we could use to access SINA.”

The issue of delivery capability was not a trivial one in the midst of a pandemic, since there was a shortage of IT components on the global market. Already during the refugee crisis, however, secunet had proven to be a reliable partner at a critical time. This time, too, secunet was able to act fast, delivering large numbers of units very quickly. In several waves, the BAMF purchased several thousand SINA Workstations. Currently, almost all workstations at the BAMF are equipped with SINA clients. While many organisations were taken by surprise by the revolution in the world of work that was so abruptly set in motion by the pandemic, the BAMF was able to make the transition via a series of smaller steps.

The roll-out is therefore ongoing. The collaboration involves three different partners: the BAMF; its IT service provider ITZ Bund; and secunet. Consultants from secunet are continually on site to drive forward the implementation of the project and provide operational support. “We very much appreciate the close collaborative partnership,” says Norbert Müller from secunet. “This has played a major role in the success of the project.”

Looking to the future
“The trend for mobile working is clearly set to continue,” says Munsi. “Additionally, there is a distinctive dynamic at play at the BAMF: we have a very large development team, some of whom are based abroad and some of whom travel between different locations. This is another reason why we will still need SINA.”

The collaboration between the BAMF and secunet has also borne fruit over and above SINA. The federal authority now uses secunet’s Session Border Controller (SBC) to secure its telephony, and separate audio and video in accordance with BSI stipulations. Further IT-related issues are currently under discussion for the future. Kausik Munsi: “Our employees want to offer our clients and partners the best possible service. We want to support them in this endeavour with our IT, helping them to achieve their goals as well as enjoy coming to work. We therefore want to enable seamless communication and create an optimally networked work environment with no media interruptions.”