As part of day-to-day communications, documents are now increasingly being exchanged by e-mail within the federal administration. Since the transmission of these messages across the internet (through public networks) implies risks for the sender, additional action needs to be taken to ensure confidentiality, integrity and accountability.

Within the federal administration as a whole, plans were therefore made to introduce procedures for encryption and digital signatures, so as to provide end-to-end security for these channels. Similar plans were also being laid by Germany's state governments and municipal councils.