Summary created by Smart Answers AI<\/p>\n
In summary:PCWorld reports that Germany\u2019s Finance Ministry wasted \u20ac35 million on 17,321 secure smartphones for customs employees, costing over \u20ac2,000 each.The Federal Audit Office found these devices were largely unusable due to poor battery life, limited functionality, and failure to meet BSI encryption standards.The smartphones couldn\u2019t provide encrypted communication until at least June 2025 due to incompatible IT infrastructure, making the investment essentially worthless.<\/p>\n
The German Federal Audit Office has highlighted a particularly remarkable case of taxpayers\u2019 money being wasted \u2013 in the Federal Ministry of Finance, of all places.<\/p>\n
According to the report, the Federal Ministry of Finance purchased 17,321 \u201csecure\u201d smartphones for the customs administration between October 2021 and December 2022. The customs employees were to use them to communicate in encrypted form \u201cexclusively in accordance with the specifications of the BSI [German Federal Office for Information Security \u2013 ed.]\u201d. The new mobile phones were to enable \u201cdata exchange up to the classification level \u201cclassified information \u2013 for official use only [VS-NfD],\u201d as the Federal Audit Office writes. <\/p>\n
But after the purchase, the officials realized that the brand new smartphones could not meet the required encryption standard. Not because they were unable to do so themselves, but because the IT infrastructure into which they were to be integrated did not provide for this. The Federal Audit Office wrote<\/a> this under the heading \u201c35 million euros misinvested: BMF procures unsuitable smartphones\u201d:<\/p>\n \u201cThe smartphones cleared for classified information were integrated into an IT infrastructure (the IT infrastructure of the Federal Information Technology Centre, ITZBund) that had no VS-NfD clearance until June 2025. Until then, customs were not allowed to communicate or process classified information with the smartphones. The smartphones also had functional restrictions in operation that the BMF and the General Customs Directorate (GZD) had not previously recognized. Many customs employees therefore decided not to use the new devices. They continued to use simple mobile phones.\u201d<\/p>\n The Federal Audit Office also mentions the sum that the Federal Ministry of Finance spent on the unsuitable smartphones: 35 million euros. According to this, a single mobile phone cost over 2,000 euros, including accessories and licenses! It is not clear from the report which specific model was involved.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not all:<\/p>\n \u201cThe smartphones had numerous functional limitations. They could only be used to a limited extent in customs practice, e.g. the calendar, telephone directory, image transfer and retrieval of work emails could not be used. They also had a high power consumption, which greatly reduced the battery life.\u201d <\/p>\n