Goals of the Sphinx project were as follows:

• Identify suitable products
  Standard off-the-shelf products were to be developed further to make them suitable for the secure exchange of digital documents, both within and between public authorities, and with third parties (citizens, companies, etc.) as a medium-term goal.
• Installation resources needed
  Suitably qualified personnel are required for the deployment of new security systems and costs are also incurred. The aim here was to determine the number of individuals required, as well as their skillsets and the duration of the rollouts.
• Training resources needed
  Alongside IT (information technology) administration, other personnel are also involved in the security system. For personnel assigned specific roles and subscribers alike, the aim was to identify the course content, number of individuals and equipment per training session, as well as the duration and costs.
• Technical design and user acceptance
  User acceptance represents an important metric for the success of any new security system. This, in turn, is influenced by the technical design. An accompanying user survey was drawn up to record the appraisal of the system by its users and operational personnel.
• Resources needed for the setup and operation of public key infrastructures, with a focus on certificate authorities
  The number of personnel required, their skillsets and the duration of day-to-day tasks were to be determined by the in-house operation of the pilot PKI (Public Key Infrastructure). To support PKI projects, specifications must be drawn up for key creation, certificate issuing, key distribution, the creation and updating of revocation lists, as well as organisational arrangements.