New control model

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In the organizational theory of public administrations, the term New Control Model ( NSM ) describes a model for the strategic control of administrations, especially in the municipal area. In addition to this, the Doppik (in some countries also referred to as New Municipal Financial Management ) describes the financial instruments and procedures that will serve the future use of double-entry bookkeeping in public administrations. Both models have the same feature that the provision of services by public administrations is controlled via the products that are aligned with the market.

Initial situation and history

The control of public administration has always been oriented towards the fulfillment of public tasks. This orientation was supplemented by a predominantly legally oriented view of the completion of tasks. The basis of administrative action in local government was u. a. the task structure of the KGSt (communal community center for administrative simplification, from November 2005 communal community center for administrative management ).

However, this view neglected any business instruments, both in leadership and financial management. This led to financial problems because the real consumption of resources was not measured and the management of the administrations was limited to legal aspects. At the end of the 1980s, the resulting problems suddenly added up due to the following causes:

  • The financial problems of public administrations have turned into structural problems due to changed economic conditions.
  • The citizens pushed more and more for customer orientation.
  • The costs of German unification significantly increased the financial problems of public administrations.
  • The administrations were increasingly required to act ecologically and economically.

In this initial situation, the administrative reform of the Dutch city of Tilburg gained attention. In the heavily indebted Tilburg, business management instruments were used and a corporate structure was formed from an office structure ( Tilburg model ). Based on this, the KGSt created its own model, the New Control Model, and published the first reports in 1991.

The new steering model largely corresponds to the international trend of public reform administration , particularly with regard to internal organization . In contrast to the public reform administration propagated internationally, mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries, the new control model was developed at the local level (and therefore for the local level). It also sees itself as an alternative to privatization, in that public (municipal) institutions / offices are run with similar business management elements as private profit centers .

Main features

The NSM recommends: Controlling the organizational units not via the allocation of budget funds (".. there are x million euros for the staff of the city theater .."), but via the (additional) definition of the expected output (example: ".. . With the budget allocated, the theater will offer x performances with y viewers and an average increase in seat occupancy of z% in the coming financial year. "). The keyword for this was "output orientation". At the same time, the decentralized organizational units should no longer be assigned the resources required to create the output (= the products) individually (= a school should no longer apply for the bulb for the overhead projector individually from the school board of directors, etc.), but the organizational units should have more decentralized responsibility for resources Receive your own budget. So that they do not use these funds in an inappropriate way, the output must be defined accordingly and compliance with such agreements must be ensured within the framework of “contract management”.

In addition to the three elements of the NSM mentioned here (= output orientation, decentralized responsibility for resources and contract management ), “competition” is the fourth element of the NSM. The basic report of the communal joint agency for administrative management says: “A company-like, decentralized management and organizational structure and (...) output control alone do not guarantee that (...) local government actually performs at its best. The new structure must now be 'energized'. The means for this is competition ”.

From the beginning, the fathers and mothers of the NSM emphasized that business management in the public sector with outdated cameralistics , which only measures “money consumption” and does not know “resource consumption” (this allows loads to be shifted into the future, example : Civil servant pensions), will always remain incomplete. In order to abolish cameralistics and replace it with a new accounting system based on the private sector, laws first had to be changed. These discussions continued around 1998 and led in November 2003 to an important decision of the Conference of Interior Ministers, in the municipalities either a double-entry accounting double-entry bookkeeping introduce or called for. Kameralistik. As a result of this resolution, all federal states have changed their municipal regulations and municipal budget regulations accordingly. For the budget and accounting of the federal and state governments, the Budget Principles Act was changed in 2009 so that the double-entry system can be applied. The states of Hamburg and Hesse were the first to change their budget and accounting systems accordingly.

Explanation of the elements

The new control model, which was presented as a model by KGSt in the early 1990s, essentially consists of the following elements:

Strategic management of the administration through politics and administration
So far, the administration has been controlled by the municipal council and the top management on the basis of individual decisions. In the NSM, target agreements are now to be agreed between the offices / departments and the management, so-called contract management . In order to be able to achieve this goal, a budget is made available to the department. The achievement of objectives is checked at the end of the budget year . The target agreements usually require an overall strategy with long-term, strategic goals from which short-term, operational goals can be derived and agreed. An instrument for goal development is today u. a. the instrument of the local sustainability strategy .
Introduction of modern instruments of personnel management
With this element an increasing delegation of responsibility and additional qualification of the staff should take place. Managers are no longer selected based on proportional representation or seniority, but rather based on leadership qualifications. In addition, these executives are sent to appropriate seminars in order to teach them the necessary knowledge (There was a popular saying in the administration at the beginning of the 90s: "Anyone who believes that an office manager is in charge of an office also believes that lemon butterflies fold lemons". ).
budgeting
In a departure from the previous, case-by-case allocation of funds by the central financial administration (finance department, etc.), each department should be allocated its own budget in the new control model. The use of the budget no longer has to be approved in advance for each case, but can be done independently. However, it is important to achieve the previously agreed goals.
Decentralized responsibility for resources
Closely related to budgeting is the department's responsibility for resources. In the old model, the personnel office, main office and finance department allocated the personnel, material and finance resources to the respective departments. This meant that chiefs could not choose their own personnel and had to fight for funds. In the NSM you have the right to manage the resources yourself. This often leads to a significant increase in efficiency and a reduction in costs.
Output-oriented control based on product descriptions
So far, the administration has focused on the purely legally oriented task completion, which it was then generally claimed that it could not be performed economically. The NSM puts the product in the foreground, the optimal provision of which is based not only on the law, but above all on the associated costs and the fulfillment of the citizens' expectations. This often leads to a boost in creativity among employees, which increases the quality of the products and often reduces costs. In order to be able to provide these products, their prior definition is of course necessary. The product catalog replaces the task structure.
Reporting and controlling
As described for the element of "strategic management", target agreements are concluded between the administrative management and the departments. In order to measure the degree of target achievement and to be able to control serious deviations in the current financial year, a reporting system is introduced. This reporting system provides the decision-makers (committees, mayors, etc.) with an overview of the development of previously defined key figures at regular intervals (months, quarters). At the same time, a support level is built in by the administration itself through strategic and operational controlling .
Technology-assisted information processing
In a conscious move away from previously existing isolated solutions, information processing should be introduced as a holistic, supportive system. At the beginning of the 90s this meant the extensive introduction of graphically oriented systems such as Windows, Office and especially the mail function within the administration. With increasing use, however, the requirement changed from a software-based orientation to a business process-supporting function. Integrated systems that offer information on various levels and also have early warning functions are increasingly sought after.
Competition to increase profitability, product and service quality
One of the biggest problems with the introduction of products in administrations is the monopoly position that an administration has in many areas. Unlike in competition, this monopoly position does not force a continuous improvement in profitability / productivity and products (as the example of the “Trabant” car shows). In order to generate pressure to innovate, real market competition or - where this is not possible, i.e. for sovereign tasks - artificial competition is introduced in the NSM. This artificial competition is primarily a matter of comparing key figures: municipalities use previously determined key figures to compare the services provided, which forces the expensive-producing municipalities to rethink their performance. In addition to inter-municipal comparisons, there are also examples of a real comparison with the market, such as B. in the municipal building management organizations that deal with real estate companies about rents u. can compare.

rating

At the beginning of the 1990s, the new control model was basically based on the approach of a practicable and future-oriented model. However, the holistic approach of this model never really caught on. On the one hand, this is certainly due to the fact that it is not binding, as it was never issued as an obligation in the form of a law or the like. However, many municipalities have used individual elements or introduced comprehensive reforms based on the NSM, which ultimately led to various improvements.

The biggest problem with the new control model, however, was its one-sided orientation towards internal organization. The reason for this was certainly the authorship by the KGSt, which also primarily sees itself as an organizational consultant. As a result, financial instruments are very vague or not included in the NSM. This becomes clear in the budgeting, which is described as an indispensable element by the KGSt, but was not consistently implemented in many local reform projects. The municipalities focused on product definition in order to better control the output. On the one hand, there was no connection to the (still) most important control instrument, the municipal budget. On the other hand, services were only vaguely defined. For example, what exactly is a school's performance? And above all: How can you measure the quality? We are looking for (but difficult to find) quality indicators that also take cost aspects into account.

In order to go from an administration in the traditional style to a modern service company, financial instruments are required that represent the actual consumption of resources and the costs of a product. The NSM could only suggest this, but not include it (laws had to be changed for this purpose, that could only be initiated by the municipalities and their associations, see above). This step has since been taken with the decision of the Conference of Interior Ministers of November 2003 for a new municipal budget law. This will perhaps help the new control model to flourish again through its immanent compulsion to act.

criticism

Critics argue that management logic is the starting point and not the specific logic of the political process and the problems of local politics. In particular, the social scientist Timm Kunstreich sees the concept as a further step towards the “economization of all areas of life”. That is the reason for the discrepancy between model and reality and the limits to the transferability of private sector experience. This transfer only works as long as there is structural and functional equivalence. Special features such as elections, association competition, party competition and changes of government must be taken into account and not seen as obstacles. Politics and politicization of administration is the decisive factor that distinguishes public from private companies. The interweaving of politics and administration is necessary because the administration has the necessary knowledge and can fall back on resources, politics is more limited. A precise definition of goals and outputs is hardly possible in politics, since too many reference systems have to be taken into account. Political objectives are often vague, contradicting, ambiguous and unstable. The type of implementation also determines the result, there are no purely technocratic implementation measures (service according to regulations). In addition, policy areas need to be differentiated. In addition, it must be ensured that federal and state goals are set in regulatory policy.

The counter-criticism asserts that the control of scarce resources regardless of the supposed differences between "management logic" and "logic of administration or politics" can be carried out most rationally with the instruments described (budgets, goals, key figures, controlling etc.). It is undisputed that the administrations at all levels have a large deficit in enforcement, but this can also be attributed to a lack of self-organization skills in the organizations. In addition, there is an incomplete implementation of the original model concept in the legal framework. This can also be seen, for example, in a comparison of the country-specific budgetary principles applicable to the implementation of the double-entry policy at the municipal level.

See also

Web links

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  1. ↑ "The New Control Model", KGSt report number 5/1993, p. 22
  2. ↑ cf. Gaby Alexandra Boele-Keimer: Municipal key figure management using the example of surveying and land registry offices in North Rhine-Westphalia Univ.-Diss., Bonn 2008, p. 33 ff.
  3. ↑ Jörg Bogumil, Stephan Grohs and Sabine Kuhlmann, 2006: Results and Effects of Communal Administrative Modernization in Germany - An Evaluation After Ten Years of Practical Experience, in: Politische Vierteljahreszeitschrift, Special Issue 37: 151-184