Sovereign AI for local authorities compared

What does “sovereign” mean for AI in local government?

There is no legal definition. The German federal government refers to the IT Planning Council’s decision on digital sovereignty: it means the ability to perform one’s own role in the digital world independently, self-determined and securely. Three goals belong to this: ability to switch, ability to shape and influence over IT providers. According to its own statement, the federal government checks case by case whether a cloud meets these goals (federal government reply, March 2025).

For a municipality, this translates into four questions:

• Location: Where is data stored, and where does the AI model compute?
• Law: Which law is the provider subject to, and does the US CLOUD Act apply?
• Switching: Can data, settings and applications be taken out again when the contract ends?
• Operation: Who runs the platform and the model, and is this also possible on your own premises?

The criteria and standards that the federal and state governments have set for their joint platform are described in the guide on the Deutschland-Stack.

What kinds of offerings are there?

Type	Examples	Where the AI model runs	Who can obtain it
State or federal solution	F13 (Baden-Württemberg), LLMoin (Hamburg, Dataport), GovGPT (federal government in Austria)	F13: within the state with open-source models; LLMoin: according to Hamburg, a model from OpenAI on Microsoft infrastructure in Europe; GovGPT: Federal Computing Centre with technology from Mistral AI	Staff of the respective body and administrations reusing the solution
Municipal IT provider	KAI from AKDB, Komm.ONE, IT-Kommunal (Austria)	KAI: according to AKDB, on infrastructure in Germany; Komm.ONE: offering from neuraflow in the STACKIT cloud	Member municipalities, partly via a framework agreement
Platform with models from several providers	Langdock, DeutschlandGPT, Kommunen-Chat	With the model providers, for example OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or Mistral AI	Any organisation with a contract
Self-hosting with open source	Open WebUI, LibreChat, F13-OS	Wherever the municipality or its provider runs it	Any organisation with its own operations
Platform that runs its own model	basebox	Cloud: on our servers in the Munich-East data centre; server: at your site	Any organisation with a licence

Information on other providers is based on their websites and the linked comparisons, as of 11 October 2026.

How do you recognise sovereignty in an offering?

• Location of the model, not just of storage: Many offerings store data in Germany but send the request to another provider’s model. Ask where each request is processed.
• The provider’s law: The US CLOUD Act obliges providers under US law to hand over data on official order, even if it is stored in Europe. This also affects models from US providers used through a German platform. More in the guide US CLOUD Act.
• Switching: Can knowledge bases, settings and applications be exported? What happens to the platform if the provider no longer exists?
• Operation on your own premises: Is operation possible in the data centre of the municipality or its IT provider, without an internet connection if required?
• Control: Do permissions come from your account management, and is every use attributed to a person and logged?
• Procurement: Is there a framework agreement, or is a separate tender necessary?

The full list is in the checklist for evaluating AI providers.

Where does basebox fit in?

• Location: In the cloud, each organisation gets a separate environment in our data centre in Germany; the AI model runs on our servers in the Munich-East data centre. Alternatively, basebox runs on a server just for you, at your site and, if required, without an internet connection.
• Model: By default, your data does not go to any AI model from another provider. An external model is only available as a separate app, if you expressly have it set up (app with an external model).
• Law: basebox is a German company; with the AI model in basebox, the US CLOUD Act does not apply.
• Switching: After the contract ends, you can export your apps with their instructions, knowledge bases and settings from the cloud for 30 days. basebox is not open source; if basebox becomes insolvent, the code will be published as open source so that customers can continue working.
• Control: Permissions come from your account management, and every use is logged. Sharing an app shares its documents, never your own access.
• Connection: Exchange, SharePoint, Nextcloud and network drives are available. Connectors for council information, document management and finance are in progress (“Coming soon” under Connectors).
• Price: The cloud starts at 5 people at €490 per person per year, list price excluding VAT; the calculator works out any other number.

What do other offerings have that basebox does not?

• Open source code: F13-OS, Open WebUI and LibreChat can be inspected and adapted. basebox is not open source.
• Procurement without your own tender: Komm.ONE in Baden-Württemberg and LLMoin for municipalities in Schleswig-Holstein are available through framework agreements.
• Operation by the public sector: The state, the federal government or a public IT provider runs the solution itself.
• A choice of many models in one interface, for example with Langdock.
• Offerings for citizens: for example chatbots on the municipality’s website. basebox is aimed at staff.

What suits whom?

• State and federal solutions suit you if your administration is among those entitled to use them.
• Municipal IT providers suit you if your IT is already there and their offering covers your tasks.
• Platforms with models from several providers suit you if your data may go to model providers and you want to use many models.
• Self-hosting suits you if you have the staff, hardware and time for operation, updates and proof.
• basebox suits you if citizen and social data should stay in Germany or on your own premises and you are looking for a ready platform with permissions, apps and logs. More at basebox for local government.