The German legal system is complex with its multitude of laws, ordinances and court decisions. There are numerous challenges: For example, the Federal and Land governments do not document judgements in a uniform manner. The “NeuRIS” project (Neues Rechtsinformationssystem - new legal information system) is the first step towards gradually reducing this complexity.

The overall project “NeuRIS” consists of two central components: a federally owned collection system and data storage, as well as a legal information portal for the general public.

The development phase started in April 2022, with DigitalService, the central digitalisation unit of the federal government, working together with the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) and the Federal Office of Justice (BfJ). The aim is to establish a central portal by autumn 2025 to replace the existing portals at federal level and better meet the demands of civil society, lawyers, academia, legal technology companies and publishers, etc.

Establishing the new portal will also fulfil the requirements of the Data Use Act. This implements the European Union's Open Data Directive, which aims to promote the publication of dynamic data and the creation of data interfaces (APIs).

DigitalService works in interdisciplinary teams and with agile software development methods right from the start, which is unusual for public sector digitisation projects.

Learn more about the agile and iterative development of the new legal information system in this blog post by Jörg Ihlefeld, Senior Product Manager at DigitalService.