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HAL2027 Makes Government Administration Safer
Cyberagentur launches second ideas competition in Berlin: Seeking concepts for the cyber-secure administrative workplace of the future.
The Agentur für Innovation in der Cybersicherheit GmbH (Cyberagentur) launched the HAL2027 ideas competition on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. sharp, at the Red City Hall in Berlin. The second ideas competition seeks concepts for the cyber-secure administrative workplace of the future and builds on HAL2025.
The starting signal for HAL2027 was given today in the Coat of Arms Hall of the Red City Hall in Berlin. The focus of the Cyberagentur’s second ideas competition is on the question of how administrative work can be designed in the future to be cyber-secure, sovereign, and practical. The competition is seeking ideas on the topic of “The Cyber-Secure Administrative Workplace of the Future.” The competition is open to researchers, students, universities, research institutions, startups, companies, and individuals.
HAL2027 addresses a key future area of public administration. Digital processes, AI systems, automated assistance functions, and new forms of work are fundamentally transforming the administrative workplace. As a result, the security policy relevance of these work environments is also growing. A cyber-secure administrative workplace means more than just protected hardware or secure software. It refers to an integrated work environment in which identities, data, AI usage, permissions, user-friendliness, and organizational processes are considered together.
“With HAL2025, we’ve seen what can emerge when unconventional ideas are given space early on. Ideas about autonomous swarm systems gave rise to a research program. HAL2027 picks up exactly where that left off: We are looking for concepts that make public administration not only more digital, but also more secure, robust, and sovereign,” said Bettina Bubnys, Commercial Director of the Cyberagentur, at the launch in Berlin.
HAL2027 is the Cyberagentur’s second ideas competition. The first competition, HAL2025, focused on “Autonomous Intelligent Systems in Swarms.” It concluded with an awards ceremony as part of the Cyberagentur’s 5th-anniversary celebration. At the time, the winners received their prizes symbolically accompanied by robots and autonomous vehicles. The submitted concepts were so substantial that they sparked a new research program. HAL2027 now applies this approach to digital administration.
Thilo Cablitz, Head of the Public Safety and Order Department at the Berlin Interior Administration, emphasized in his opening remarks: “HAL2027 sends a strong signal for the future of cybersecurity in Germany. The competition demonstrates that innovative capacity, the government’s ability to act, and digital security are inextricably linked. For the Berlin administration as well as for the federal administration, we need workstations that are not only efficient and user-friendly, but also resilient, sovereign, and secure.”
In addition to conveying the greetings from Iris Spranger—Senator for the Interior and Sports—regarding the success of the competition, he said: “Cybersecurity is no longer a niche topic, but a fundamental prerequisite for the government’s ability to act. HAL2027 brings together exactly the ideas we need for the administrative workplace of the future: secure, user-friendly, resilient, and interoperable for Berlin, the federal government, and public administration as a whole.”
“The administrative workplace of the future is not created solely by new technology, but by good ideas that integrate security, usability, and the government’s ability to act. HAL2027 creates the right space for this. The competition is an important impetus for Berlin, for the federal administration, and for a sovereign digital administration in Germany,” Thilo Cablitz also explained the value of the ideas competition for the capital and other administrative units.
With HAL2027, the Cyberagentur is deliberately seeking ideas for the future. The competition aims to highlight early-stage, high-risk, yet plausible solutions. The focus is not on short-term product development, but on concepts with scientific depth and long-term impact. Relevant issues include secure human-AI interaction, trustworthy assistance systems, robust identity and authorization models, sovereign workplace architectures, and protective mechanisms against manipulation, data leakage, and abusive automation.
“Public administration needs digital workplaces that function across jurisdictional boundaries, are secure, and are accepted in everyday life. HAL2027 thus addresses a key question of digital public services: How do we combine user-friendliness, federal interoperability, and cybersecurity?” said Martin Schallbruch, CEO of govdigital eG.
He positioned HAL2027 within the strategic challenges of administrative digitization. govdigital brings together the perspectives of 32 public IT service providers, which collectively represent approximately two million administrative workstations. The ideas competition thus addresses not a peripheral issue, but a core area of the state’s capacity to act. Schallbruch highlighted five points: First, the global situation will not become any easier in the future, which is why administrations must be able to respond more quickly to crises. Second, Germany remains “caught in the crossfire of international, hybrid attacks,” so public IT must remain capable of acting even under pressure. Third, the state must understand and control its technological dependencies: the decision is whether Germany can “manage” these dependencies. Fourth, the administration will “no longer be able to afford” today’s diversity of isolated, individual digital solutions; scalable, shared solutions for the federal government, states, and municipalities are needed. Fifth, the public sector will have to operate with fewer staff in the future. This increases the importance of technical support, such as AI-assisted systems. HAL2027 addresses precisely this intersection: “The questions raised by HAL2027 are not merely about technology, but about the state’s ability to act.”
The project manager of HAL2027, Dr. Jens Weise, highlighted the approximately two million administrative workstations united within the govdigital association alone: “This represents enormous potential for this ideas competition, which we want to harness to create the cyber-secure administrative workstation of the future.”
Submissions for HAL2027 are accepted until August 18, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. A total of 150,000 euros in prize money is available. With this ideas competition, the Cyberagentur aims to reach new participants, highlight unconventional approaches, and lay the groundwork for potential research projects. It is crucial that the concepts go beyond existing solutions and can make a recognizable contribution to cybersecurity in the public sector.
Further information:
https://idee.cyberagentur.de
Contact:
Agentur für Innovation in der Cybersicherheit GmbH
Große Steinstraße 19
06108 Halle (Saale)
Michael Lindner
Press Officer
Phone: +49 151 44150 645
Email: presse@cyberagentur.de
Background: Cyberagentur
The Agentur für Innovation in der Cybersicherheit GmbH (Cyberagentur) was founded in 2020 by the German Federal Government as a wholly owned in-house entity of the German Federal Government under the joint leadership of the German Federal Ministry of Defence and the German Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community, with the aim of adopting an application-strategy-oriented and interministerial perspective on internal and external security in the field of cybersecurity. Against this backdrop, the work of the Cyberagentur is primarily aimed at the institutionalized implementation of highly innovative projects that carry a high risk with regard to achieving their objectives but, at the same time, have the potential to cause significant disruption if successful.
The Cyberagentur is an integral part of the National Security Strategy of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The Cyberagentur is led by Prof. Dr. Christian Hummert as Scientific Director and Bettina Bubnys as Commercial Director.
Dr. Jens Weise, Project Manager
https://www.cyberagentur.de/en/press/hal2027-macht-verwaltung-sicherer/
Launch of HAL2027 in the Coat of Arms Hall of Berlin’s Red City Hall: Participants, supporters, and ...
Quelle: Cyberagentur
Copyright: Cyberagentur
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Launch of HAL2027 in the Coat of Arms Hall of Berlin’s Red City Hall: Participants, supporters, and ...
Quelle: Cyberagentur
Copyright: Cyberagentur
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