GWDG

The Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttigen (GWDG) is a service provider for the Max Planck Society and other research facilities.

Request procedure

A GWDG account is automatically created for every new user.

1. You'll receive a mail from the GWDG with an initial password.
2. Change this password (you must not use your institute password).
3. Read the "which kinds of data am I allowed to store on servers of the GWDG" FAQ.
4. Start using the services of the GWDG.

Services

The following list only contains services recommended by the IT department of the MPI CBS. A full list of GWDG services can be found here.

Name	Description	Documentation
ownCloud	Cloud storage for data (synchronization, sharing, etc.)	MPI / GWDG
GitLab	Git based revision control system for software/documents	GWDG
ChatAI	AI service that does not store the chat history and allows to select language models	GWDG / MPG AI Policy
Confluence	Collaboration und documentation platform (Wiki)	MPI
HPC Cluster	High performance computing	MPI / GWDG

Hint: there are also some services which are not hosted by the GWDG but are using their identity management. To log in to those services you have to use your GWGD account.

Name	Description	Documentation
Eduroam	WiFi service which allows access to the Internet at several research institutes and universities	MPI
SoSci	GDPR compliant survey platform	MPI / Provider
MPG-SSO	central MPG services (SAP, MAX, etc.)

FAQs

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Which kinds of data am I allowed to store on servers of the GWDG?

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To be General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant, some kinds of data cannot be processed/stored on servers of the GWDG. Both the Max Planck Society and the GWDG have so called data privacy classes to categorize data. Please have a look at documentation of the MPG to learn more about the different classes. Detailed information about which kind of data can be stored/processed with which GWDG service can be found in this spreadsheet (only available in German).

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What can I do if I forgot my password?

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The IT department can reset your password. Please write a ticket for that.

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How can I reset my 2FA?

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When you lost or broke your smartphone you might need to reset the 2FA of your GWDG account. The easiest way to do that is to use the Recovery Tokens you got when setting up your 2FA. Just go to this page and follow the instructions.

If you don't have access to your Recovery Tokens any more, please contact the GWDG support to request the reset. They are already working on a solution to allow local IT to reset 2FA, but it's not available yet.

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