Vanessa Winge und Christoph Brändle
Last year, the Berlin Senate Chancellery launched its first City Challenge and implemented it in close cooperation with the Smart City Unit of Berlin Partner für Wirtschaft und Technologie GmbH. On November 10, 2025, Martina Klement, former Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of the State of Berlin and State Secretary for Digitalization and Administrative Modernization, announced the results of the competition, which was divided into two categories (challenges). The winner of the “Digitalization of Procurement Preparation” challenge was Augnum GmbH. The Baden-Württemberg-based company further developed and prototyped the “123Vergabe” pilot project for the Senate Department for Economics, Energy, and Public Enterprises. Vanessa Winge from the Senate Department for Economics, Energy, and Public Enterprises and Christoph Brändle, Managing Director of Augnum GmbH, share more about the challenge and the “123Vergabe” tool.
The City Challenge 2025 was a first for Berlin. What motivated you to submit a topic for a challenge?
Vanessa Winge: For years, our working group had been struggling whenever it came to preparing a procurement process, because with forms that sometimes ran up to ten pages — even with the utmost care — it was easy to make a typo or accidentally check the wrong box, which then took a lot of effort to track down and correct. The City Challenge gave us an opportunity to test how this process could be made simpler while still ensuring legal compliance. It’s great that we were then able to implement this through the City Challenge.
What was the objective of the “Digitization of Procurement Preparation” challenge?
Vanessa Winge:Procurement preparation is often still time-consuming and not very digitized. The goal was to make processes simpler, more efficient, more transparent, and more standardized — and with fewer headaches.
Christoph Brändle, how did you hear about the competition? And what motivated your company, based in Baden-Württemberg, to participate in a Berlin-based challenge?
Christoph Brändle: We learned about the City Challenge through LinkedIn. Augnum GmbH was founded in 2021 in Münsingen in the Swabian Alb. We specialize in digital process optimization — including in the public sector. It made perfect sense for us, as a company from Baden-Württemberg, to participate in a Berlin challenge: The challenges of digitalization are similar across all federal states — but with the City Challenge, Berlin has created a format that gives small and medium-sized enterprises low-barrier, fair access to government administration. It was precisely this openness to external innovation that convinced us. What’s more, as a city-state, Berlin is a particularly exciting pilot environment because the state and local levels are often more closely integrated.
How does the digital application “123Vergabe” that you developed work?
Christoph Brändle: In a procurement process today, identical information must be entered up to eleven times into different forms, and any changes must be updated across all screens—this is error-prone and time-consuming. In 123Vergabe, all information required for the respective procurement is entered just once in a central input screen. The tool automatically populates all relevant forms based on this information. Subsequent changes are made exclusively in the form and are consistently applied to all affected forms. A live preview displays the completed form as you enter data, and a completeness check flags any missing information. The subject-matter department and the procurement office work in the same system: The procurement office can review and comment on entries directly, and the subject-matter department sees the notes immediately and makes adjustments. At the end, all forms can be generated as final documents at the click of a button—a seamless workflow without emails, downloads, or printouts. For the Senate Administration, we implemented the forms required for the sub-threshold procurement of goods and services. During the pilot phase, we refined the solution based on user feedback through regular feedback meetings and structured tests—both in terms of user guidance and individual functions such as form editing.
For the further development of “123Vergabe,” Augnum, as one of the two winning teams, received 25,000 euros. Where and how is the application now being used in Berlin’s administration?
Christoph Brändle: We invested the funds specifically in the development of the application. Today, “123Vergabe” is in use as a productive pilot at the Senate Department for Economics, Energy, and Public Enterprises—that is, it’s already part of real-world administrative operations. At the same time, we’re holding discussions to transition the application into regular operation in the future. This would significantly simplify access for other Berlin administrative departments.
What specific benefits does the tool offer Berlin’s government agencies? Has there been any feedback from users yet?
Vanessa Winge: The tool saves time, reduces errors, and creates greater transparency. The feedback from the field has been positive, and I’m frequently asked within my own department about how the tool can be used. Currently, I’m giving a presentation on the tool almost every week.
The City Challenge 2025 also focused on a future pilot implementation. What might scaling up look like?
Vanessa Winge: We hope it won’t just remain a pilot project, but that we’ll be able to continue using the tool for our procurement preparations. We already have several colleagues on board. The Berlin Public Procurement Act is currently being revised, which will also lead to changes in the forms. Nevertheless, we’re optimistic that the tool will gain traction and may eventually be integrated into a comprehensive solution for the entire procurement process—all the way to the contractor—because it’s simply very helpful. Scaling the tool beyond our organization would need to be outlined in collaboration with the Senate Chancellery and other relevant processes. We’d, of course, be very happy to be part of that.
Christoph Brändle: From our perspective, there are three dimensions to scaling. First, it could be used horizontally within Berlin: The forms are relatively standardized across the State of Berlin. This would allow 123Vergabe to be deployed in all of Berlin’s procurement offices without major adjustments. Centralized deployment would be the technical enabler for this. Second, it could be used nationwide: The need extends far beyond Berlin. Since the application runs on the infrastructure of the respective administration, portability to other states and municipalities is easily achievable. Our software can be easily adapted for that. Third, we’ve further developed the use case: With our new solution “Tenderfant,” we’re reimagining procurement preparation with AI support.
What insights did you gain from the City Challenge Berlin 2025 competition format?
Vanessa Winge: The close collaboration with all project partners—through the Berlin Senate Chancellery and Berlin Partner für Wirtschaft und Technologie GmbH—as well as the structured process were particularly valuable and helpful. We’ve learned that a project like this ultimately takes much longer than we initially thought. The discussion about the procurement preparation process within our own organization was also very beneficial. We were able to establish new, helpful contacts here and see that we’re all pulling in the same direction. I think we’ve also learned what we would do differently now.
Christoph Brändle: For us as a young company, the City Challenge was an exceptionally well-designed format: a clearly structured two-stage process, realistic timelines, and, above all, direct access to the future users. We’d especially like to highlight the outstanding collaboration with Norbert Herrmann and Vanessa Winge from the Senate Department for Economics, Energy, and Public Enterprises. It was close, fair, and on equal footing. This allowed us to develop and optimize our solution not on the drawing board, but within the context of real-world administrative operations. That is the decisive factor for success in the GovTech sector. What did we learn? When the government creates spaces for innovation with a manageable budget and a clear pilot focus, tangible results emerge quickly—we’d like to see more of this, even beyond Berlin.
To wrap up, could you please finish the following sentence: “Berlin is smart because ...”
Vanessa Winge: ... ideas are allowed to grow here without everything having to be perfectly planned from the start.
Christoph Brändle: ... here, you have the chance to initiate improvements yourself.
