How AI comes into the administration

Let's compare AI with Lego. "Imagine," says Frank Oschkinis, "a child gets a box of Lego bricks. Everyone says there's something really great inside." But when they open the box, all they see at first is a pile of colorful bricks of different shapes and sizes. "Now they have to figure out what to do with them. They can build houses, airplanes, vehicles - whatever they want. There are no limits to the imagination. Lego, like AI, is a powerful tool with endless possibilities." Oschkinis is Section Head for Technical Infrastructural Facility Management, one of four groups in the Department of Construction and Facilities Management at the university. Together with his 80 or so colleagues, he takes care of everything that is not related to building construction, such as caretaking. Oschkinis had never had anything to do with AI before.

So he was all the more curious when he took part in one of two AI pilot groups in the spring: 26 employees from the university administration and central facilities were each introduced to possible uses of AI in a workshop format on four "AI FrAItages". They practised on specific use cases, such as writing minutes and standardized emails, text summaries, research, etc. The AI FrAItage are part of the "Simplify and Omit" initiative launched by Chancellor Oliver Fromm in 2023, which aims to analyze and simplify administrative and work processes between the Faculties and the administration and eliminate unnecessary steps.

While AI was completely new territory for Oschkinis, Elina Saida and Dr. Birte Cordes, who also took part in the AI FrAItagen, had different experiences. Elina Saida works in the Department of Strategic Development in Academic Controlling. Her job is to collect, process and evaluate data generated at the university and make it available within the university in order to "obtain decision-relevant information", she explains. Right from the start, she had to deal with new programs and complex programming languages. "It was wonderful that I could have incomprehensible code explained to me by ChatGPT." However, she admits that you have to remain critical and sometimes ask the AI tool questions.

Birte Cordes takes a natural approach to ChatGPT and co. She is a subject librarian for electrical engineering and computer science at the University Library, but also has other tasks there, such as the DaKS research data repository for the storage and description of research data and its long-term archiving.
"I use AI, for example, to access functions in Word and Excel for which my knowledge would otherwise not have been sufficient; also to find ideas for images or slogans and for workshop planning as well as to convert texts, e.g. from blog posts to suitable Instagram short texts." However, the AI is not able to set the right priorities in terms of content. Cordes has to take on this part herself with her specialist knowledge. There is also a lot of room for improvement in terms of style and consistency.

The digitization office is now evaluating which AI programmes have the greatest benefit for the university, together with the Strategic Personnel and Organizational Development department, which coordinated and supported the AI FrAItage. It is also deriving a training program for employees from this. A third pilot group is currently running.

Elina Saida, Birte Cordes and Frank Oschkinis enjoyed taking part in the KI-FrAItage: Gaining experience, learning useful approaches, trying out tools, exchanging ideas with colleagues - "all that was great," summarizes Cordes. Saida: "I hope that the pilot groups will be continued and that the networking of colleagues interested in AI will be intensified." Oschkinis has a similar view: "I'll come back to Lego. Suddenly five children are sitting around the box and building a village from different perspectives and ideas. It was similar for us: as a group, we benefited greatly from the communication, the exchange and the changes in perspective and learned so much." In short: the personal also plays the biggest role in the virtual world.

This article appeared in the university magazine publik 2025/2. Text: Andreas Gebhardt