What is the German citizen hackathon "Deutschland, was geht?"

The citizen hackathon "Deutschland, was geht?" was run in 2026 by SPRIND, a German federal agency, and Germany's federal digital ministry. Modeled on Taiwan's Presidential Hackathon, it turned 27,707 complaints about government offices into 13 issues, which citizens then ranked by quadratic voting.

Have you ever been made to hand in the same document again and again at a government office, or not known which counter to go to? In Germany in 2026, the state collected these everyday frustrations from citizens and let them vote on which to fix first. The vote used a method that, unlike the usual "one person, one vote", also lets people show how strongly they feel.

In short

"Deutschland, was geht?" (Germany, what works?) is a citizen hackathon run jointly by SPRIND, a German federal agency, and the Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation (BMDS) [1]. A hackathon is an event where teams work intensively over a short period to build prototypes.

Its model is Taiwan's "Presidential Hackathon" [1]. Citizens ranked 13 issues, drawn from citizens' submissions, by quadratic voting (quadratische Wahl). Based on the result, selected teams are now building prototypes [2].

For example

The voices collected. Submissions reached 27,707 [2]. There were three ways in: the "AI Reporter", the "AI Citizen Hotline" by phone, and the "Einfach machen" (make it simple) written form [3].

The result of the vote. Voting on the 13 issues ran from July 6 to July 20, 2026 [4]. First place went to "ÖPNV einfacher machen" (make public transport, such as buses and trains, simpler), second to "Verwaltung als Service statt Kontrolle" (administration as a service rather than control), and third to "Neue Technik schneller testen" (test new technology faster) [4].

What comes next. Twenty-one teams were selected to build prototypes addressing the top issues, and began work on September 7 [2]. In December there is a "Ministerpitch", a presentation in front of the digital minister Karsten Wildberger, and the promise is that, if things go well, the results will be built into the federal administration from the following year [2][1].

In more detail

Who started it, and why

SPRIND (Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen, the Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation) is a federal agency that supports breakthrough innovation. The project was run by SPRIND.SOCIETY, a unit set up within it for social innovation [1][5].

SPRIND announced the project on January 16, 2026, at the DLD conference in Munich. Its title then was "Deutschland, was nervt? Deutschland, was geht?" (Germany, what's annoying? Germany, what works?). The announcement said it would take as its model Taiwan and the approach centered on Audrey Tang. It also said that Pol.is (a tool that uses AI to help find points of agreement) and Quadratic Voting, as the best methods internationally, would be adapted to German conditions [5].

In a conversation at the same DLD, Tang said "we are co-creating the Presidential Hackathon model here in Germany". She summed up Taiwan's system as "Join for what sucks and Presidential Hackathon for what works" (Join being Taiwan's participation platform) [6]. Zarah Bruhn, who leads SPRIND.SOCIETY, said in a later interview that in Taiwan digital participation greatly increased trust in the state, and that the aim is to bring that mechanism to Germany [7].

The stages

According to the official website, the stages are as follows [2]:

Submitting problems (until June 14)
Voting on the 13 issues (until July 20)
Team applications (until August 20)
Prototyping (from September)
A presentation to the minister at the end of the year, and introduction into the administration the following year

In the prototyping stage, each selected team receives up to 25,000 euros. After that, up to five teams receive up to 100,000 euros more from a separate pot [1]. The software built is expected, as far as possible, to be published as open source on the public code repository openCode.de. Copyright in principle stays with the teams [1].

Sorting the submissions

According to the methodology notes of the report "Deutschland-Report", the submissions were analyzed by AI-based sensemaking (KI-basiertes Sensemaking, finding meaningful groupings in a large body of text), and SPRIND's team checked the results [8].

SPRIND's July announcement says that AI-assisted processing produced 265 opinion clusters. The 13 issues were chosen as ones combining importance to society, room for innovation and political feasibility [9]. The report divides the themes into 25 and lists them in order of number of submissions: digitalization of administration 9,368, applications 7,989 and quality of service 5,433 [8]. The name of the tool used is not given in the sources this site has collected.

How the quadratic vote works

The FAQ explains it like this [1]:

It is a little like "Wahl-O-Mat", the pre-election tool for matching voters with parties: for each of the 13 issues, you choose agree, neutral or disagree.
Then you use points to show how much weight you give to each agreement or disagreement. You can use up to 100 points.
The more points you pile onto one issue, the more "teurer" (expensive) that choice becomes.

The organizers explain that this method produces results that are as balanced as possible and protects minority opinions [1].

To make it one person, one vote, identity is checked with a German mobile phone number. The number is not stored as it is; only a cryptographic fingerprint (a value produced by an irreversible transformation) is kept, and the content of votes is said to be anonymous [1]. The ranking produced by the vote not only decides which issues teams apply for, but is also used as a weight in reviewing applications [1].

Comparison with Taiwan's Presidential Hackathon

According to chapter 2-2 of the book Plurality, in Taiwan's Presidential Hackathon participants and the broader public helped choose the winning teams, using Quadratic Voting [10]. At a 2019 meeting discussing this voting method, Tang explained that each person starts with 100 points of tokens, and that one vote costs 1 point, two votes 4 points and three votes 9 points [11].

The 100 points are the same as in Germany. The difference is what the votes go to: in Taiwan, to proposals (teams); in Germany, to issues. In Germany, points can also be used on the disagree side [11][1]. And in Germany, the vote comes before prototyping, at the stage of deciding what to work on [2].

What is debated

Realization is still to come. The IT news site heise reported on the January announcement and concluded that what will actually be realized in German government offices remains to be seen [12]. As of October 2026, prototyping is still under way [2].
Numbers that have not been published. The results table on the official website has a "Priorität" (priority) column, but from the page this site retrieved only the ranking could be read, not the points. The number of people who voted has not been found either [4].
Discrepancies between sources.
The voting deadline is July 19 in SPRIND's July announcement and July 20 on the official website [9][2].
On the number of teams, the January announcement speaks of 15 ideas to be funded, one place on the official website's front page says up to 20 teams, and the FAQ says 21 teams were selected [5][4][1]. A post about the launch event on September 14 lists 20 teams as the "Top20" [13].
On the number of issues, too, the vote was on 13 issues, but the FAQ's section for teams gives 14 problem areas to apply for [1].
The share of submissions from outside large cities is 41.8% in the July announcement and 61.5% in the report. This could be a difference in how they were counted, but no explanation is given [9][14].
Taiwan's trust figures. SPRIND cites the rise in trust in government in Taiwan as grounds, but the figures differ from source to source. The January announcement says the Asian Barometer value rose from 25 in 2016 to 65 in 2024 [5]. The Digital Democracy Lab page says from 9% in 2014 to over 70% in 2020 [15]. Tang said at DLD that approval, in single digits around 2014, had passed 70% by 2020 [6]. All of these are claims by the organizers or the speaker, and this site has not verified them.

Where it fits in Plurality

The book discusses Quadratic Voting, as voting that can express how strongly one supports something, in chapter 5-6 "⿻ Voting" [16], and gives Taiwan's Presidential Hackathon as a real example in chapter 2-2 [10]. The German project names that Taiwanese institution as its model [5][1]. → Taiwan's digital democracy

The procedure of sorting a large number of free-form submissions into groupings with AI and then having people check them can be set alongside Japan's broad listening (such as Talk to the City). This comparison is this site's own, however. SPRIND itself does not use that term and has not disclosed the name of its tool [8][9].

Whether Pol.is, named in the January announcement, was actually used cannot be confirmed from the sources collected [5][2]. How the book was received across the German-speaking world is summarized in Plurality in the German-speaking world, and the case of Japan in Plurality in Japan.

Sources

Deutschland, was geht?, "Häufige Fragen" (Frequently asked questions) (in German) — https://deutschland-was-geht.org/faq
Deutschland, was geht?, "Über den Bürger-Hackathon" (About the citizen hackathon) (in German) — https://deutschland-was-geht.org/about
SPRIND, "Start of the citizen hackathon" (2026-05-18) — https://www.sprind.org/en/words/magazine/start-citizen-hackathon
Deutschland, was geht?, front page (results of the vote, in German) — https://deutschland-was-geht.org/
SPRIND, "Deutschland, was nervt? Deutschland, was geht?" (2026-01-16, in German) — https://www.sprind.org/worte/magazin/deutschland-was-geht
From Taiwan to Germany: How Radical Participation Leapfrogs Public Trust (DLD 2026, CC0) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2026-01-17-From-Taiwan-to-Germany-How-Radical-Participation-Leapfrogs-Public-Trust.md ［CC0］
SPRIND, "SPRIND.Society für gesellschaftliche Innovationen" (SPRIND.Society for social innovation) (interview with Zarah Bruhn, 2026-05-07, in German) — https://www.sprind.org/worte/magazin/interview-sprind-society
Der Deutschland-Report – Dashboard (in German) — https://deutschland-was-geht.org/report/dashboard
SPRIND, "27,707 submissions - now it's Germany's turn to decide" (2026-07-07) — https://www.sprind.org/en/words/magazine/germany-whats-next-voting
Plurality, 2-2 "The Life of a Digital Democracy" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
2019-02-18 總統盃黑客松票選方式討論 (Discussion of the Presidential Hackathon voting method) (CC0, in Chinese) — https://sayit.archive.tw/2019-02-18-%E7%B8%BD%E7%B5%B1%E7%9B%83%E9%BB%91%E5%AE%A2%E6%9D%BE%E7%A5%A8%E9%81%B8%E6%96%B9%E5%BC%8F%E8%A8%8E%E8%AB%96 ［CC0］
heise, "SPRIND Citizen Hackathon: Germany, what annoys?" (2026) — https://www.heise.de/en/news/SPRIND-Citizen-Hackathon-Germany-what-annoys-11150621.html
LinkedIn page of Plurality ¦ Pluralität DACH (reposted post) — https://www.linkedin.com/company/plurality-dach
Der Deutschland-Report (in German) — https://deutschland-was-geht.org/report
SPRIND, "Digital Democracy Lab" — https://www.sprind.org/digitales-beteiligungslabor
Plurality, 5-6 "⿻ Voting" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-6/eng/ ［CC0］

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