The Reference Architecture of a National Digital Education Ecosystem

10 pages•Published: November 6, 2025

Andreas Hartmann, Markus von der Heyde, Duy Nguyen, Holger Zimmermann and Ulrike Lucke

Abstract

The fragmented IT landscape in education impedes transitions, both for individual users (learners/teachers) on their educational journey and for the administrative bodies involved. The German initiative to create a national digital education space aims to counteract this situation. The centerpiece of the solution is a distributed middleware that connects existing IT systems of educational institutions, while leaving their autonomy untouched. In addition, value-added functions and an access point for informal education scenarios are provided via a portal. The article presents the architecture of this solution, explains it using selected scenarios and introduces key components. It concludes with a look at the current status of the rollout and the upcoming steps.

Keyphrases: architect specialist discussion, architecture design & security, educational interoperability, germany national digital education ecosystem, higher education reference model herm, it component description, szenario based solution

In: Laurence Desnos, Raimund Vogl, Lazaros Merakos, Carmen Diaz, Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz and Stuart Mclellan (editors). Proceedings of EUNIS 2025 annual congress in Belfast, vol 107, pages 50-59.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/Prxz
	https://doi.org/10.29007/gjdv

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{EUNIS2025:Reference_Architecture_National_Digital,
  author    = {Andreas Hartmann and Markus von der Heyde and Duy Nguyen and Holger Zimmermann and Ulrike Lucke},
  title     = {The Reference Architecture of a National Digital Education Ecosystem},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of EUNIS 2025 annual congress in Belfast},
  editor    = {Laurence Desnos and Raimund Vogl and Lazaros Merakos and Carmen Diaz and Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz and Stuart Mclellan},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {107},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {/publications/paper/Prxz},
  doi       = {10.29007/gjdv},
  pages     = {50-59},
  year      = {2025}}

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