09-20, 17:15–18:00 (Europe/Berlin), LAB 4
Its openness and adaptability is what makes Matrix particularly interesting for government organizations. Recently, FITKO and the German Federal Ministry of the Interior joined efforts to pilot a Matrix-based next-generation communication infrastructure for digital government services. The aim of the pilot is to showcase end-to-end encryption, great usability and machine-readable communication between citizens and public authorities. We would like to give an insight into the project and discuss further applications of the Matrix protocol in the public sector, such as adding real-time capabilities to online procedures and connecting industry and government IT systems.
Matrix is widely known as an open standard and communication protocol for the instant messaging use case. The protocol integrates well with the modern web ecosystem and provides end-to-end security, with no single points of control or failure. Beyond instant messaging, Matrix aims to be a generic messaging and data synchronization system for the whole web, built for securely transmitting and replicating JSON data between Matrix-capable clients, servers and services.
Its openness and adaptability is what makes Matrix particularly interesting for government organizations. Last year, the Architecture Board of the German IT Planning Council launched a project to evaluate Matrix as a foundation for government-to-citizen (G2C) and government-to-business (G2B) communications. FITKO and the Federal Ministry of the Interior joined efforts to pilot this Matrix-based next-generation communication infrastructure between citizens and public authorities.
The aim of the pilot is to showcase end-to-end encrypted communication and great usability as well as to evaluate machine-readable communication such as multiple-choice questions, the answers to which can be automatically processed by the administration's IT systems.
Due to its generic end-to-end encrypted data exchange capabilities, Matrix may also be a great fit for other applications in the government domain, such as providing real-time capabilities to online procedures, realizing the once-only principle, and establishing machine-readable communication between industry and public administration.
I have been discussing and designing IT infrastructures in the public sector for several years now, both from a civic tech/FOSS perspective as well as within the public administration at the German Federal IT Cooperation (FITKO).
When it comes to the design of modern IT infrastructures, my focus is on privacy- and security-by-design principles and the social impact of technology design. Cryptography and openness are our friends on the way to achieving these goals.
George is part of the architecture management team at FITKO, the central coordination and networking office for digitization projects in public administration in Germany.