“Self-Hosting Makes Us Faster”: How DigitalService Runs Surveys to Deliver User-Centered Public Services

Learn how DigitalService des Bundes, the German federal government's digitalization partner, runs user research across more than ten parallel ministry projects on a single self-hosted Formbricks instance, with data residency, automated deletion deadlines, and strict project isolation built in from day one.

About DigitalService

DigitalService des Bundes is the German federal government's in-house digitalization partner. Founded in 2020 and wholly owned by the Federal Government, its 250+ interdisciplinary staff in Berlin build and operate digital services with federal ministries, from the property tax return used by million users to the online justice services at service.justiz.de.

Their mandate is user-centered by design. Their motto is “Change through delivery.” And every line of software they write is open source, under a principle they state plainly: public money, public code.

https://digitalservice.bund.de

Self-hosting makes us faster. Because we work on a project basis with various ministries, it is our responsibility to respect their rigorous standards for data protection. Self-hosting allows us to reliably tailor our infrastructure to meet those needs from day one, ensuring data sovereignty and making our collaboration far more seamless.

Joshua NowakUser Researcher @ DigitalService

Key Stats

Results at a Glance

The initial setup was done in weeks and saved lots of compliance overhead

2 weeks

From Decision to Production

A two-week engineering effort took DigitalService from the self-hosting decision to a live production instance on their VPC.

>15

Ministry Projects

Project workspaces run side by side on one instance, each a closed room. The data belongs to the ministries, and granular team roles control who has access to which project.

Manual Compliance Work

A nine-month data retention deadline is enforced automatically every day through the Formbricks API, with zero recurring manual effort.

Use Cases

How DigitalService Leverages Formbricks

From a research panel for Germany's justice services to strict multi-ministry isolation, one self-hosted instance covers the full workflow.

A Research Participant Panel for Germany's Online Justice Services

One of DigitalService's largest programs is Justiz-Services – Onlinedienste der Justiz, a pilot platform built with the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection where citizens can, for example, apply for legal aid, claim flight compensation, or file a small-value payment claim online.

To improve those services, the team needed a steady supply of research participants: private individuals, lawyers, and people in other roles. Their answer is a Formbricks link survey at service.justiz.de/feedback, the team's preferred recruiting source, linked from flyers and touchpoints across the platform. Sign-ups give GDPR consent, tell the team which legal topics they have real experience with, and share a few attributes about themselves. The panel then lives in Formbricks and is queried directly when a study needs participants.

The part that made it fast to implement in a public-sector context was first-party data ownership and a comprehensive API. Panel data must be deleted after nine months, and the team had to prove that to stakeholders before launch.

surveys.digitalservice.dev/s/…surveys.digitalservice.dev · ContactsLive surveyExample data

Erforderlich

In welcher Rolle möchten Sie teilnehmen?

Als PrivatpersonAls Rechtsanwältin / RechtsanwaltAls Person in einem anderen juristischen Beruf / in der JustizSonstiges

Weiter

Bereitgestellt von Formbricks

"In which role would you like to take part?" First question of the sign-up at service.justiz.de/feedback

Contacts

ContactsAttributesSegments

IDEmailrolesignupDate

cm9a…x1n.k…@web.dePrivatperson2026-10-02

cm2f…7dm.s…@gmx.dePrivatperson2025-12-21

cm6p…k9j.b…@posteo.deRechtsanwalt2026-06-02

cm1z…3at.w…@kanzlei.deRechtsanwältin2025-12-09

cm7r…m4l.h…@mail.deJustiz2026-03-11

DigitalService's deletion workflow runs daily, outside Formbricks

1Find contacts whose signupDate is over 9 months ago 2 found

2Delete each one through the Management API DELETE /api/v1/management/contacts/…

3Gone from the instance, no copy anywhere else Done

The good thing is that there are no third parties processing our data collected with Formbricks and its comprehensive API. Every day our custom workflow checks which entries are older than nine months, and those get deleted. Since there is no third party involved, we can prove that deleted really means gone. That's great for showing stakeholders we can implement the retention deadline automatically, and it means no manual effort for us.

Joshua NowakUser Researcher @ DigitalService

Using

Link Surveys Contacts & Attributes Management API Self-Hosting

surveys.digitalservice.dev/s/…surveys.digitalservice.dev · Surveyssurveys.digitalservice.dev · Summarysurveys.digitalservice.dev · WebhooksExample data

May we ask you in a few weeks how your experience with legal aid went?

Yes, you may contact meNo, thanks

Finish

Last step of the online legal aid application

SurveysNew survey

NameStatusCompletedType

Legal aid follow-upIn Progress214Link Survey

Monthly court surveyIn Progress37Link Survey

Legal aid opt-inIn Progress1,208Link Survey

Flight compensation feedbackIn Progress486Link Survey

Small claims usability studyCompleted52Link Survey

Research panel sign-upIn Progress2,931Link Survey

Legal aid follow-upIn Progress

SummaryResponses

Impressions640

Starts41%262

Completed82%214

Time to Complete1m 32s

How easy was it to apply online?

Rating214 Responses★ 4.3

5 ★ 52%4 ★ 28%3 ★ 12%1–2 ★ 8%

How did you find the online application?

Single-Select214 Responses

Flyer at the court82 Selections 38%

Search engine69 Selections 32%

Legal advice centre41 Selections 19%

Other22 Selections 11%

WebhooksAdd Webhook

WebhookSourceSurveysTriggers

Slack: legal aid answershooks.slack.com/services/…UserLegal aid follow-upResponse Finished

Recent deliveries

Response FinishedLegal aid follow-up → Slack09:42

Response FinishedLegal aid follow-up → Slack09:17

Response FinishedLegal aid follow-up → Slack08:55

Response FinishedLegal aid follow-up → Slack08:31

Response FinishedLegal aid follow-up → Slack07:58

Metabase reads the results through the REST API.

Measuring Outcomes Where the Process Turns Analogue

Many of the services DigitalService builds hand off to an analogue process at some point: an application gets printed, posted, and decided by a court. That is exactly where the team used to lose visibility into whether the service actually worked.

Now a Formbricks survey sits at the end of the application flow: may we ask you in a few weeks how your experience with legal aid went? Applicants opt in with their email address, which is stored in StackIT. Weeks later, n8n sends the follow-up survey. Incoming anonymous answers are routed straight into a Slack channel via webhook, and the success variables are pulled into a Metabase dashboard alongside product analytics, so the team sees the whole picture in one place.

A monthly survey to participating courts closes the loop from the other side, capturing application data quality and how cases were actually decided.

Using

Link Surveys Webhooks Hidden Fields REST API

15 Ministry Projects, Strictly Separated, on One Instance

DigitalService works as a contractor: the products and the data belong to the ministries. That makes project isolation a hard requirement, not a nice-to-have: nobody on project A may see project B's responses.

Formbricks workspaces plus granular team access roles give them exactly that. More than ten projects run in parallel on one self-hosted instance as closed rooms, with SSO in front. The practical effect is that onboarding a new team barely involves the central research function at all.

surveys.digitalservice.devExample data

TeamsAssign members into teams and give teams access to workspaces.

Create team

Team NameSize

Justiz-Services6 membersYou are a memberManage team

Project B4 membersManage team

Project C3 membersManage team

Team updated successfully

The whole roles concept is incredibly important for us, because we're a project organization. When introducing a new team to Formbricks, our job often comes down to setting the access roles once, then the team is up and running. Sometimes it's a single call, sometimes just a few Slack messages. The Formbricks documentation is excellent for that, so people can get going themselves and the engineers in the team can set up their own workflows. Not having to worry about the tooling means we can focus on research and survey design.

Joshua NowakUser Researcher @ DigitalService

Using

Teams & Access Roles WorkspacesSSOSelf-Hosting

The Open Source Advantage

Why DigitalService Chose Formbricks

Formbricks cleared the compliance bar that blocks a lot of SaaS in the German federal administration, and stayed flexible enough to automate around.

Data Residency Builds Trust

Running Formbricks on infrastructure they control means personal data is processed exclusively in Germany. With data sovereignty guaranteed, aligning with the rigorous privacy standards of different ministries becomes a streamlined process: being able to say the instance is self-hosted is often what earns stakeholder trust in the first place.

Open Source by Default

DigitalService develops all its own software as open source under a “public money, public code” principle. An open source survey platform they can read, audit, and extend fits that commitment rather than working against it.

An API-First Platform to Automate Around

The Management API is what turns Formbricks from a survey tool into infrastructure: automated retention, custom confirmation emails, Slack routing, panel management, and a migration script the team wrote once and other projects reused.

Built for a Project Organization

Granular workspaces and team access roles let one instance serve more than ten ministry engagements without any risk of cross-project visibility, with a full modern feature set in every one of them.

**Volker Hartmann**Platform Lead @ DigitalService

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