The Federal Computing Centre of Austria – Bundesrechenzentrum (BRZ) is the market-leading e-government partner of the federal administration in Austria.

Primarily, the BRZ is in charge of approximately 1,200 employees, 3,000 servers and has equipped 1,200 locations throughout Austria with infrastructure; this service has successfully deployed more than 300 IT-processes. Overall, the BRZ supports more than 400 e-government applications that are used by five million users.

The BRZ runs one of Austria's largest computing centres, its own parallel computing centre and ensures one of the most reliable infrastructures available. The Federal Computing Centre of Austria is also an internationally renowned cooperation partner and has been part of projects such as the Euritas (European Association of Public IT service provider).

The history of the BRZ dates back to 1971, when Austria’s government agreed on an ICT concept for the administration: “To implement the required structural improvements we will have to concentrate on developing our ICT infrastructure.”
As a result the federation founded a computing office that focused on their domestic allocations and finances. The Federal Computing Office enabled an advance in efficiency and productivity in the 70s and 80s.

In 1992 the federal government defined three key factors within the federal ICT concept: the interaction between citizens and the economy, a focus on business management and the standardisation of ICT.  Subsequently, a computing centre for ICT services and administrative know-how was developed.

In 1997, Austria’s Federal Computing Centre Ltd. (BRZ GmbH) was founded and all of the Federal Computing Office’s ICTprocesses were referred to the BRZ. In fact, the company is still owned by the Republic of Austria and represented by the Ministry of Finance. The BRZ (formerly the Federal Computing Office) was outsourced from the Federal Ministry of Finance with the following aims: resource pooling, the modernisation of the administration, head-count reduction and a more flexible salary scheme. From the beginning, the BRZ has been a full-service provider for the Ministries of Finance and Justice. Gradually from 1998 – 2006, the Computing Centres of the Education Ministry, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection were integrated into the BRZ.