We are well on schedule and things are moving forward. This progress has only been possible thanks to a great effort by the entire setup team. On January 1, 2021, Autobahn GmbH will take overall responsibility for Germany’s freeways – replacing the previous structure where projects and tasks were managed at the individual federal state level.
Anne Rethmann, Managing Director of Finance at Autobahn GmbH des Bundes
In terms of road construction, we see that each region of Germany is very diverse. We want a more uniform approach in the future, which is why our goal is to pull together the administration of Germany’s entire autobahn network under one roof. The foundations for this are the legal regulations for reforming Germany’s federal highways, which were initiated by the country’s federal and state governments in 2017. We want to plan and build faster and more efficiently, and we want to cut traffic jams by creating a nationwide traffic management system. In addition, it is important for us to guarantee drivers a safe, service-driven autobahn experience – particularly through continuous innovations in the areas of IT, construction and mobility.
We will build an independent IT infrastructure for our company. Where ERP is concerned, we have decided to implement SAP solutions, and we have a large number of specialist applications that we will consolidate in the future. In that sense, everything we are doing is new, but we aren’t reinventing the wheel. In concrete terms, we are validating the existing best practice processes and solutions in each region and will use these to create a target landscape for our three core processes: planning, construction and operation. In addition, we are providing impetus for comprehensive new solutions in the areas of geoinformation and traffic management. At the moment, though, we are focusing most closely on the functions and processes that will be essential on January 1, 2021.
Of course, we will meet their expectations. We will implement the guidelines of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), and fulfill the requirements of GDPR and the German act governing the identification of critical infrastructures (Kritis-Verordnung). In addition, we will support the goals of reforming and digitizing Germany’s freeways with an efficient, process-oriented and innovative application landscape.
We have decided not to build our own data center. Developments in this area are so fast-moving that it is actually no longer worth investing resources into it. This also applies to the many security aspects that play a role in this regard. That is why we are leveraging cloud-based solutions – and here, too, we will ensure compliance with data protection regulations. The BSI’s regulations and GDPR requirements are undoubtedly binding in this area and these will be met in full.
In addition to the autobahns, there is already a second network in place that is used in each federal state for telematics applications, traffic management and the operation of tunnels. We will modernize this network to create an interconnected Germany-wide backbone that can also be used for office communications and other digital applications in the future.
It is certainly quite a challenge; after all, we are not alone in the marketplace. But we also have a lot to offer potential employees, such as a very good collective labor agreement and the historic opportunity to participate in building and designing an innovative IT and application landscape from the ground up. And as a matter of fact, we have had a lot of applicants.
