Reference report Digital Workplace for Teachers (DAP)

The Ministry of Education of Baden-Württemberg provides all public schools within its jurisdiction with SCHULE@BW, a modular digital education platform. The Digital Workplace for Teachers (DAP) is a central component of this platform. It offers a digitally sovereign alternative to proprietary office suites and provides teachers with the core capabilities of a modern web-based workplace. Univention’s Identity & Access Management solution, Nubus, enables users to access all integrated applications with a single sign-on.

User

Ministry of Education of Baden-Württemberg
More than 2,800 schools
830,000 provisioned users, including 100,000 teachers
The Digital Workplace (DAP) has been rolled out to more than 80,000 teachers (as of July 2026)

Requirements

Modular, browser-based digital workplace for teachers, independent of device and operating system
Flexibility to adapt to future requirements without vendor lock-in
Central Identity & Access Management and Single Sign-on for all connected applications
Integration with the existing state Identity & Access Management system via a SCIM interface
GDPR compliance and digital sovereignty
Scalability to support statewide deployment

Solution

openDesk as the digital workplace
Nubus as the central Identity & Access Management solution for DAP
Single Sign-on via OpenID Connect
SCIM interface for integration with the state’s Identity & Access Management system using CRUD processes
UDM REST API and UDM Hooks for provisioning logic
UCS Intercom Service as the communication layer between applications
Integration of Open-Xchange for email, calendar, contacts, and tasks
Integration of Nextcloud and Collabora for file storage and office productivity

Initial Situation

In 2019, the Ministry of Education relaunched its Digital Education Platform initiative. The guiding principles were clear: modular architecture, centralized provisioning, technological sovereignty, cross-device accessibility, and reduced administrative burden for schools.

The first concrete step followed in 2020/2021 with the introduction of Threema Work Education, providing teachers with a GDPR-compliant messaging solution. However, messaging alone does not create a complete digital workplace. Teachers also needed email, file storage, office applications, calendars, and a central system to manage identities and control access across all services.

Baden-Württemberg faced both an advantage and a challenge. The state already operated a school administration system containing the authoritative user master data. This existing data source was to remain the foundation for the Identity & Access Management system responsible for provisioning digital identities for SCHULE@BW and the Digital Workplace.

Implementation and Rollout

A pilot project involving 550 teachers from 38 schools began in November 2022, initially based on Dataport’s dPhoenixSuite as the foundation for DAP. Teachers tested the functionality they rely on every day: sending emails, creating and sharing folders and files, and collaborating on documents in real time. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, particularly regarding the collaborative approach and the seamless integration of the individual components. Based on these results, the Ministry decided to move forward with the project.

The rollout took place in stages, first serving hundreds, then thousands of users, until approximately 60,000 teachers were using DAP by the summer of 2025.

By that time, the Center for Digital Sovereignty (ZenDiS) had developed openDesk, the federal open source digital workplace, on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of the Interior. Since openDesk was largely based on the same technical foundation as dPhoenixSuite, the Ministry decided to leverage these synergies and merge the two projects. During the 2025 summer holidays, DAP was successfully migrated to openDesk within a remarkably short timeframe. The feedback afterward was simple: teachers barely noticed the transition.

How DAP Works

To access the Digital Workplace, teachers log in to SCHULE@BW using their username, password, and a second authentication factor. From the SCHULE@BW dashboard, they launch DAP with a single click.

Behind the scenes, Univention Nubus authenticates the user and provides seamless access to DAP via Single Sign-on. DAP not only knows who is logged in but also identifies the school where the teacher works and their colleagues within that organization.

All DAP applications, including email, calendar, Nextcloud, Collabora, and others, are connected through the UCS Intercom Service and are accessible through the browser across different devices and operating systems.

Mario Schmid presented the Digital Workplace for Teachers at the Univention Summit 2026. Watch the talk here on YouTube (German).

Conclusion

The Digital Workplace and SCHULE@BW demonstrate that digital sovereignty and technological sovereignty can be successfully achieved in a large-scale production environment.