Inside AEGIS: A First Look at the Architecture

Last week I wrote about why I'm building a platform to connect European government systems. The response was overwhelming. Hundreds of impressions, messages from people in public administration, developers asking "when can I see the code?"

So here's a first look. Not everything, not yet. But enough to show this isn't a slide deck. It's real, it's tested, and it's almost ready for the public.

The Name

AEGIS stands for Automated European Government Infrastructure System. In Greek mythology, the aegis was a shield carried by Zeus and Athena. A symbol of protection. That felt right for a system designed to protect citizens from bureaucratic chaos while keeping their data safe.

The citizen-facing side is called CIVOS, short for Civic Operating System. Because that's what it is: an operating system for your life as a European citizen.

Two Faces, One Mission

AEGIS has two sides that work together:

AEGIS (B2G) is the invisible backend. It connects national government systems, translates between their formats, and pre-validates citizen requests before a human caseworker ever sees them. Think of it as the translator between 27 countries that currently don't speak the same administrative language.

CIVOS (B2C) is what citizens actually use. A mobile app and web interface where you describe what you need (in plain language or through a service picker), verify your identity, upload documents, and track your application in real time. No more wondering if your papers arrived. No more calling an office that doesn't pick up.

How a Request Flows

Here's what happens when a citizen needs something from a government across borders:

Citizen opens CIVOS
    "I need to register my residence in Stuttgart"
         |
         v
    AEGIS identifies: residence registration
    Required: identity verification + proof of housing + employment contract
         |
         v
    Citizen verifies identity via EU Digital Identity Wallet
    (or NFC passport scan as fallback)
         |
         v
    Documents uploaded via camera or file picker
    AI pre-validates: are all fields filled? dates consistent? format correct?
         |
         v
    Package routed to Stuttgart Meldeamt
    Caseworker gets: structured, pre-checked, ready-to-decide package
         |
         v
    Citizen gets push notification: "Application approved"

What used to take months now takes days. What used to require three office visits now requires zero.

The Building Blocks

Without giving away every implementation detail, here's what AEGIS is made of:

Identity Layer - Built around the EU Digital Identity Wallet (eIDAS 2.0). Citizens prove who they are once, digitally, and that verification travels with their request. No more photocopying passports at every desk. The identity service handles consent management too: you decide exactly which data points to share, nothing more.

Orchestration Layer - The brain. When a request comes in, the orchestration engine figures out which government service to contact, what documents are needed, and in what order things need to happen. It uses AI to pre-screen applications, catching missing documents and inconsistencies before they waste a caseworker's time.

Country Connectors - This is where it gets interesting. Every EU country has its own administrative systems, its own formats, its own quirks. AEGIS uses modular country connectors that translate between the platform and national systems. Currently built and tested: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Poland, with an EU-wide connector for cross-border evidence exchange.

Process Engine - Government procedures are workflows. Residence registration has steps. Visa applications have steps. The process engine models these as formal workflows (BPMN) so nothing falls through the cracks and every step is auditable.

Audit Trail - Every action is logged, pseudonymized, tamper-evident. Not because we want to watch anyone, but because government processes require accountability. If something goes wrong, you can trace exactly what happened without revealing personal data.

Mechanism Engine - The fairness layer. When multiple citizens compete for limited slots (think: appointment booking at an embassy), the mechanism engine ensures fair allocation. No more camping outside an embassy at 4 AM. No more crashing a booking website. Game theory applied to public service.

What's Deliberately NOT in the Architecture

Some things we chose not to build, and that's just as important:

No central database of citizens. AEGIS processes data in transit and discards it. Zero persistence for personal information. Your data exists in your wallet and in the government's system. AEGIS is just the pipe between them.

No AI decision-making. AI pre-screens. AI flags. AI suggests. But every actual decision is made by a human caseworker. This isn't about replacing government workers. It's about giving them clean, structured input instead of a pile of paper.

No single point of failure. The system is designed to run across multiple European cloud providers. If one goes down, traffic routes to another. No single company and no single country controls the infrastructure.

The Stack (High Level)

I won't publish the full technical stack yet (that comes with the open source release), but here's the philosophy:

• European cloud only. German providers as the primary infrastructure, with additional providers in other EU countries for redundancy. Zero data outside EU jurisdiction.
• Open standards everywhere. eIDAS 2.0, BPMN 2.0, OpenID for Verifiable Presentations, W3C Verifiable Credentials. No proprietary protocols.
• Post-quantum ready. Yes, already. The cryptographic layer supports ML-KEM and ML-DSA alongside classical algorithms. Because government infrastructure built today needs to be secure for decades.
• Fully tested. Every country connector has its own test suite. The identity service, the crypto layer, the AI provider, all of it. Hundreds of automated tests across the platform.

What's Next

The codebase is being prepared for public release. Documentation is being finalized. The compliance framework (GDPR, eIDAS 2.0, BSI standards) is documented and auditable.

What I'm looking for right now isn't funding or customers. It's collaborators. People who work in:

• Government digitalization (any EU country)
• Public administration reform
• Digital identity (eIDAS, national ID schemes)
• Open source civic tech

If you've read this far and thought "finally, someone is building this," reach out. The repository goes public soon. But the conversations need to start now.

Because the code is the easy part. Getting 27 countries to try something new? That's the real challenge.

This is the second post in a series about AEGIS. The first, "Bureaucracy Shouldn't Separate Families", explains why this project exists. The next post will cover the open source release.