Data archiving

Archive for the Federal Employment Agency

The German Federal Employment Agency (BA) is planning the introduction of electronic files as part of an integral concept. The first step will be the setup of a long-term archive that complies with strict statutory specifications (e-file archive) – a project that has been awarded to T-Systems. “It will be one of the largest document archives in Germany, which can be extended to cover several hundred terabytes,” explains Wolf Mohr, the responsible Account Manager. The Federal Employment Agency is modernizing its services for the employment market. Its most important objective is to optimize its job recruitment, in order to reduce unemployment and costs. At present, the BA uses about 200 specialist applications, including systems for job recruitment, unemployment benefit II and child benefit. Over a million documents are produced every day, and as a rule they are still stored as hard copies.

The search for specific information is often time-consuming and arduous. An independent IT service is therefore to be launched to store electronic documents and the related stock and performance data. Large document volumes from all the specialist applications have to be retained in an efficient e-file archive, available for use as preserved vidence, for at least 10 to 30 years. “In carrying out the e-file archive project, the IT department at the BA has set itself an extremely challenging target. The successful implementation of this project is another component in the e-Government 2.0 initiative,” says BA Project Manager, Mathias Ehlers.