How Workflow-Driven Automation Becomes Operable Under Air Gap & Compliance Constraints#

Henry Ölsner · NTT Germany & Christian Miene · 50Hertz

• Why: Automation under German critical-infrastructure rules where always-on connectivity is not a given — and the use-case list includes an 802.1X migration (the only identity-adjacent item in the whole program) and MPLS VRF WAN segmentation.
• What: A transmission-system operator's journey from unmanaged Python scripts, regex parsing and undocumented cron jobs on a backup server to a platform (DINA) run by a 5-person team: 106,654 workflow executions and 719 sub-process executions, covering CMDB sync, 802.1X migration, MPLS VRF rollout, a DC self-service portal, and VM network provisioning across ~4,000 devices in 6 network zones.
• How: The Workflow Definition Document (WDD) is the centerpiece: one formal, auditable contract per use case containing goal/KPI, BPMN workflow, UI design, data models, constraints, and external dependencies — reviewed by stakeholders on a fixed cadence. Platform principles: air-gapped by design, build once/deploy unchanged, develop without live-system access, workload distributed via Django + Celery.
• Where applicable: Specific to air-gapped, compliance-heavy critical infrastructure (dependency wheels chains, no GitLab connectivity), but the WDD-as-contract pattern is a strong fit for any change-managed environment, regulated or not.