Public Sector

From today, the ‘Tax return in a single click’ service enables citizens to automatically generate simple tax returns – with just one click. The service is accessible via the MeinELSTER+ app and is initially aimed at single, childless employees and recipients of retirement income. The ‘Tax Return in One Click’ service is built entirely on the A12 AI Low Code Platform from mgm technology partners, which has formed the technological foundation of ELSTER for many years.

Two days in Berlin, over 2,000 decision-makers from government, politics, and business, and one theme that ran through nearly every discussion: Those who do not control their own digital infrastructure lose their ability to act. The Future Congress on government & administration 2026 demonstrated that digital sovereignty has long been a pressing issue of the present. mgm was represented this year with two program contributions and actively shaped the debate.

The debate surrounding digital sovereignty in critical infrastructures has gained momentum. Regulators, operators and security authorities are asking the right questions: Where is my data stored? Who controls my infrastructure? Will I still be able to function in the event of a crisis? Yet an equally fundamental question is often overlooked: what about the software itself?

In this episode of Innovation Implemented, Hauke Rickertsen from the Ministry of Finance and Digitalization of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Raik Writschan from the City of Rostock, and Marcus Warnke from mgm consulting partners discuss at Noerd in Rostock what happens when the state and local governments establish genuine joint structures.

Imagine your government agency receives a bill at the beginning of the year. The software licenses for day-to-day operations have gone up in price again, this time by 17 percent. No room for negotiation, no alternatives. Many government agencies in Germany have built up digital dependencies from which they can hardly free themselves today. There is more to this than just an IT problem: it is about who retains control over critical digital infrastructure. It is about digital sovereignty.

At the end of May 2026, mgm technology partners made its A12 development platform open source – a move that has attracted attention within...

mgm technology partners GmbH is making the source code of the A12 AI Low Code Platform available from 27 May 2026. The Community Edition is now available on openCode and GitHub. The A12 platform has proven itself over many years on highly complex public administration projects, such as ELSTER. A12 enables the creation of complex specialist applications using model-based software development and low code. By opening up the source code, all organisations and companies can now benefit from this experience and operate their applications with digital sovereignty.

When the topic of digital sovereignty comes up in public administration, many people first think of technology—software, servers, the cloud, and license agreements. That’s not wrong, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. At its core, digital sovereignty is a question of power.

AI-assisted code generation promises speed — but without clear architectural boundaries, the result is risk, not results. Generated code isn't inherently secure, maintainable, or testable. What matters is the framework it's produced in: precise architectural constraints limit what's possible so that entire classes of errors are structurally eliminated. How this works in practice — and why A12 acts as a safety net.

Year after year, the Future Congress on Government & Public Administration serves as the central gathering place for everyone actively shaping the digital transformation of the public sector. mgm will be there again this year – and has two powerful messages to share.