Court Administration

The court administration is divided into the administrative department, the registry, the information services and the department for external relations.

Administrative Department

The administrative department is responsible for the use of human resources and materials that the budgetary legislator makes available to the Federal Administrative Court for the discharge of its duties. The administrative department is in charge of the personnel administration. Responsible for facility management, it ensures security and maintenance of the building. It is responsible for maintenance of the information technology. Moreover, it takes control of day-to-day management and court operations.

Registry

The registry supports and attends to the judicial activity of the senates. Its staff manage the court files, sort incoming mail and assign them to the correct proceedings. The registry drafts procedural orders and court orders for the senates. It ensures that files are circulated within the senates and monitors the access to the files granted to parties by request. The registry monitors deadlines and handles clerical duties. Registry staff prepare records of the Court's oral proceedings.

The registry also sets the costs of the proceedings. One of its most important tasks is to collate decisions by the Court. In doing so, it reviews the judgments and decisions for formal errors. The review includes statutory provisions, source references, citations and the linguistic accuracy of the rulings.

The registry is divided into work units. They are assigned to the senates of the Federal Administrative Court.

Information Services

The information services consist of the library and the documentation unit. They provide the information that the Federal Administrative Court requires for its judicial activity.

The library is a court library for judges, research associates and other employees of the Court. Its task is to purchase relevant specialist literature especially concerning administrative, state and constitutional law and to make it available to users.

The documentation unit complements the services provided by the library. It reviews essays and articles in legal journals and compendia for internal and external use. Moreover, the documentation unit edits decisions by the Federal Administrative Court and certain other courts for publication on the federal government's research portal. The latter is a publicly available, paid service. The adjudication distribution unit posts more recent decisions of the Federal Administrative Court for free download on the Court’s website. It also provides older decisions by email or post as a paid service.

Department for External Relations

The department for external relations supports the President of the Federal Administrative Court in the external representation of the Court. It provides the Court's public relations, in particular maintains its website, publishes the annual report and organises regular open days. In press relations, the department for external relations cooperates with the Court's press spokespersons. The department for external relations organises events and takes charge of visitors. Furthermore, the department maintains international relations in collaboration with the judges in charge of international relations and is responsible for the translation of the Court's judgments and decisions as well as press releases into English. It also performs the resulting terminology work, which is necessary for the quality assurance of the translations in the field of administrative law.