The Work-and-Stay Agency Tender: Is Germany Asking the Right Question First?

Key takeaways: Germany plans to tender the central IT components of the Work-and-Stay-Agentur (WSA) in 2026 [1][9]. That turns a political promise into a specification, and whatever is in the tender is what gets built. But the most important question is still open: who decides what? Until that is settled, Germany risks buying an expensive platform for an organisation that doesn't exist yet. This post looks at what the tender needs to get right for skilled workers, employers and recruitment agencies.

As of September 2026. Opinion piece with sources. At the time of writing, no tender notice or award had been published.

From promise to procurement file

On 5 November 2025 the German cabinet adopted the key points (Eckpunkte) for the Work-and-Stay-Agentur [1]. At its core is a central digital platform built on the once-only principle. Skilled workers submit information and documents one time, every authority involved uses that data, and employers can see how far the case has got and which documents are missing [1]. The WSA is explicitly not a new authority. It is a partnership between the Federal Employment Agency (BA) and the Federal Office for Foreign Affairs (BfAA) [2]. Chancellor Merz has called it the biggest digital project of this parliamentary term [5].

Tenders look dull, and that is exactly why they matter: they turn intentions into requirements. Whatever isn't specified is missing from the product, often for ten years. So the WSA decisions with the biggest consequences may not be made in the Bundestag. They may be made in the requirements document.

1. You can't solve an organisational problem by buying software

The key points sound convincing, but they leave open who will decide what. A February 2026 position paper by DigitalService des Bundes and PD, the federal government's in-house consultancy, sets out the four options under discussion [6]:

• Option 1: keep the current responsibilities and roll out an application portal to the municipalities.
• Options 2 and 3: centralise part of the work, either first-time applications only or certain case types such as the EU Blue Card.
• Option 4: move visas and all temporary work and education residence permits to the federal level, at the BfAA, with the BA in partnership.

DigitalService and PD recommend Option 4. Anyone drafting the tender should read their reasoning. Under Options 1 to 3, the platform would have to connect the different IT systems of more than 500 local immigration offices (Ausländerbehörden), which the paper expects to become the main cost driver [6].

The Nationaler Normenkontrollrat (NKR), the federal watchdog on red tape, agrees. A digital platform that isn't matched by simpler procedures and bundled responsibilities is a reform stuck halfway [5]. According to the NKR, state secretaries still hadn't agreed on the bigger organisational reform by March 2026 [5].

The uncomfortable point: a September 2025 draft of the key points said the necessary laws had to be passed before the major development work could be tendered [3]. The current plan runs the tender and the legal changes in parallel [9]. If the tender goes out before responsibilities are settled, the market will be asked to build a platform for an organisation that doesn't exist yet. There are two likely results. One is a platform flexible enough to fit every option, which is expensive and vague. The other is a platform that quietly assumes Option 1, because that asks for the fewest political decisions. Either way, the software ends up making a decision that politics avoided.

2. The real problem is capacity, not user experience

The numbers are stark [6]:

• About 120,000 labour migrants from outside the EU currently apply each year.
• Forecasts say Germany needs up to 350,000 net immigrants a year.
• Around 800,000 skilled workers will be missing nationwide by 2028.
• Some authorities have up to 30% of posts permanently vacant.

So the system needs to handle roughly three times today's volume, and some of the offices doing the work are already short of staff. A nicer front end won't fix that. What fixes it is throughput: fewer handovers between authorities, no duplicate checks, and more decisions that can be automated. The key points promise exactly this. Facts that have been checked once aren't to be checked again, and duplicate work between the visa and the first residence permit is to go [3]. PD's feasibility study estimates at least 40% less processing time, but only if technology and organisational bundling come together [6].

Question for the tender: does it measure success as "platform live" or as "median days from job offer to first working day"? These lead to very different products.

3. Information is not the bottleneck

It is tempting to make the WSA a very good website. The draft key points already consider folding in "Make it in Germany", the BA's information services and the "Working and Living in Germany" hotline [3].

According to the government's answer to a parliamentary question, "Make it in Germany" has cost €35.8 million since 2012, and the hotline has handled more than a million enquiries [8]. Neither one places anyone in a job or issues a residence permit [8]. Skilled workers rarely give up because they couldn't find the information. They give up because they waited months for a decision. A WSA that is mostly a portal would repeat that mistake at a larger scale.

4. Employers: users of the platform, or people it informs?

For employers, recruitment agencies and anyone else hiring internationally, a few sentences in the key points matter most [3]:

• Employers are to get a bigger role in applying for residence permits.
• The government is considering a separate application route for employers.
• Employers are to be able to feed employment information into the process through their own access.

That would be a real shift. At present the employer, who knows the contract, the salary and the start date, is mostly a bystander. The tender will decide whether this becomes real. There are two possible outcomes:

• Walled garden: a citizen portal, with employers given a login to a status page.
• Infrastructure: documented interfaces that let employers, accredited recruiters and HR systems submit structured, verified data straight into the process, the way tax software files with ELSTER.

Only the second makes once-only work across the whole chain. A contract is created digitally once, checked once, and reused by every authority. The first leaves thousands of companies copying the same data by hand into yet another system.

Employers are sceptical. In October 2025, Isabell Halletz of the Arbeitgeberverband Pflege (the care employers' association) warned that a body that only makes recommendations to other authorities won't speed anything up [7]. The tender is where that scepticism will prove right or wrong.

5. Don't forget the "Stay"

The name has two halves, but the debate is almost all about the first. Getting someone into the country is only the start. After that come:

• residence permit renewals,
• changes of employer,
• family reunification, and
• the move to permanent residence.

Under the more cautious options, these follow-up procedures stay with the local immigration offices [6]. That is exactly where the long waits and the rising number of lawsuits over authorities not deciding come from [6]. A skilled worker who arrives smoothly and then waits months for a renewal won't recommend Germany to anyone. If the first tender wave covers only the pre-entry process, "Stay" becomes a promise for a later budget.

6. What a good tender would do

Five tests for anyone reading the tender documents when they appear:

1. Outcome KPIs, not features. Processing time, the share of applications correct the first time and the share of cases decided without an in-person appointment should be written into the contract.
2. Interfaces for employers and intermediaries. Built in from the first release, not added later.
3. Modular, phased delivery. The key points themselves propose a "plug-and-play" approach [3]. The tender must not lock one vendor into a single ten-year monolith.
4. Reuse what already works. The Foreign Office's Auslandsportal already connects 167 visa offices and 47 visa application centres. According to the draft key points it had processed 60,000 visa applications online by September 2025 [3]. The BfAA already handles about 20% of all skilled worker visas centrally, and the goal is 100% [2].
5. A decided organisational model. Either the responsibilities are settled before the major build contracts are awarded, or the architecture must make it cheap to move them later.

What this means for employers today

The WSA will arrive in stages: first for skilled workers entering Germany, later for apprentices and students [2][9]. Until it makes a noticeable difference, today's procedures apply. Employers recruiting now should use the accelerators that already exist, above all the fast-track procedure under § 81a Residence Act. They should also keep their data structured and digital now. If your documents, contracts and certificates are already in clean digital form, you can use a future interface on day one. For an overview of the legal routes, see our Skilled Immigration Act guide for employers.

In February 2026 the federal government said building the WSA had only just begun and that the IT infrastructure question would be settled this year [4]. So this year's decisions will shape the next decade of skilled immigration to Germany, and most of that will happen in the procurement file, not in parliament.

Open questions for our readers: Should a platform be tendered before it's decided who will run it? If employers get their own application route, should accredited recruiters and hiring platforms get one too, with the liability that comes with it? And what is a year of delay worth, measured in unfilled jobs in nursing, engineering and the trades?

Frequently asked questions

What is the Work-and-Stay-Agentur? A planned digital agency for skilled immigration built around a central IT platform. Skilled workers submit their documents once, every authority involved uses that data, and employers can see how the case is progressing. The cabinet adopted the key points on 5 November 2025 [1].

Is the Work-and-Stay-Agentur a new authority? No. It is a partnership between the Federal Employment Agency and the Federal Office for Foreign Affairs [2].

When will the platform be tendered? A tender for central IT components is planned for 2026 [9]. In February 2026 the federal government said the IT infrastructure question would be settled this year [4]. At the time of writing, no tender notice had been published.

What changes for employers? Employers are to see the processing status and missing documents and get a bigger role in the application. A separate application route for employers is being considered [1][3]. How far this goes depends on how it is built.

Does the WSA replace the fast-track skilled worker procedure? Not as things stand. DigitalService and PD propose that the states' central offices keep handling the pre-approval in the fast-track procedure, at least in the medium term [6].

Sources

1. German Federal Government: "Kabinett beschließt Eckpunkte für Work-and-Stay-Agentur" (05.11.2025), https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/kabinett-work-and-stay-agentur-2391978
2. Federal Office for Foreign Affairs (BfAA): "Kabinett beschließt Aufbau der Work-and-Stay-Agentur zur Fachkräfteeinwanderung", https://bfaa.diplo.de/bfaa-de/aktuelles/2742454-2742454
3. Key points on the Work-and-Stay-Agentur, draft of 26.09.2025, published by Table.Briefings, https://table.media/assets/berlin/wsa_entwurf.pdf
4. German Bundestag, hib: "Regierung: Work-and-Stay-Agentur erst am Anfang" (17.02.2026; government answer, printed paper 21/4075), https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/kurzmeldungen-1146284
5. National Regulatory Control Council (NKR): statement on setting up a Work-and-Stay-Agentur (March 2026), https://www.normenkontrollrat.bund.de/Webs/NKR/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Positionspapiere/2026-03-wsa-fachkr%C3%A4fteeinwanderung.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=6
6. DigitalService GmbH des Bundes / PD – Berater der öffentlichen Hand GmbH: "Work-and-Stay-Agentur: Impulse für eine mutige und wirkungsorientierte Reform der Migrationsverwaltung" (02.02.2026), https://digitalservice.bund.de/presse/positionspapier_-impulse-fur-die-ausgestaltung-der-work-and-stay-agentur-pd-und-digitalservice.pdf
7. Care vor9: "Arbeitgeber erwarten nicht viel von Work-and-Stay-Agentur" (23.10.2025), https://www.carevor9.de/inside/arbeitgeber-erwarten-nicht-viel-von-work-and-stay-agentur
8. Wetterauer Zeitung: "Portal für ausländische Fachkräfte kostet 35 Millionen Euro" (02.04.2026), https://www.wetterauer-zeitung.de/politik/portal-fuer-auslaendische-fachkraefte-kostet-35-millionen-euro-zr-94246847.html
9. Rechtsanwalt Maibaum: "Work-and-Stay-Agentur: Ansatz zur Beschleunigung der Fachkräfteeinwanderung" (23.04.2026), https://www.ra-maibaum.de/work-and-stay-agentur