Standard cost model

This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

The standard cost model (SKM for short), which was invented and used for the first time in the Netherlands , is used to estimate the bureaucratic costs caused by state information obligations .

The standard cost model is a pragmatic estimation method with which a small section of the existing bureaucratic burdens is estimated:

The burdens on the economy, citizens and administration that are based on legally prescribed information and reporting obligations (applications, forms, statistics, evidence, etc.) are valued.

Calculation method

The standard cost model only estimates a part of the administrative costs, namely the costs that consist of information obligations of the economy. It is the product of the number of reportable processes, processing time and hourly rate.

Example: If a company is obliged to submit monthly statistics for which the employee needs 2 hours and incurs wage costs of € 80 per hour, the individual company incurs costs of € 160 per month or € 1,920 per year. If 10,000 companies are now active in this branch in Germany, the standard bureaucracy costs of this reporting obligation amount to € 19,200,000.

Categories of information obligation

The information obligations of companies take many forms.

1. Obligation to report / notify (including the archiving of information)
2. Application for approval
3. Application for recognition (e.g. vocational training)
4. Implementation of registrations / measurements
5. Performing regular examinations
6. Preparation of regular reports
7. Carrying out inspections (e.g. machines, health risks, environmental risks)
8. Application for exemption (e.g. to have an employee exempt from a legal obligation)
9. Constantly updating a company's disaster plans and programs
10. Cooperations with audits (e.g. monitoring of external staff)
11. Labeling (of food)
12. Information for third parties, unless the company has to provide this anyway for reasons of private law (e.g. issuing an invoice by the doctor)
13. Providing information to third parties (e.g. a financial insert for investment products)
14. Submission of documents (such as an IHK register or a waybill)
15. Filing in the register (for higher-level information collection)

Costs not considered

Due to the method of calculation, large parts of the administrative costs are not recorded at all, e.g. B .:

• Time costs due to disruptions in the administrative process (processing errors, waiting times due to capacity bottlenecks, etc .; the SKM only measures the productive phases of processing)
• IT costs for the implementation of automated reports (if these are not included in the hourly wage)
• Avoidance costs (e.g. a sister company is founded to avoid the obligation to approve a works council)
• Failure to invest or consumer spending

Application in Germany

In Ostwestfalen-Lippe , North Rhine-Westphalia, the first German pilot measurement based on the Dutch standard cost model was carried out in order to reduce bureaucracy .

In April 2006, the Federal Cabinet adopted the “Reducing Bureaucracy and Better Regulation” program. The program is based on the standard cost model (SCM). Its implementation is an overarching permanent task of the federal government, in which all federal ministries are involved. The method manual of the federal government for the introduction of the standard cost model in Germany was published in August 2006. The Federal Statistical Office ( Destatis ) is responsible for carrying out the estimates and advises all bodies involved. By the end of 2006, all federal ministries had recorded the information obligations for the economy resulting from federal and EU law (around 10,000). On this basis, the estimation of administrative costs began in early 2007. The Federal Government has set itself the goal of examining the entire body of law in Germany for unnecessary bureaucracy and introducing simplification measures. The federal government is aiming for a reduction target of 25% by the end of 2011. Up to autumn 2007, more than 2000 information obligations of the economy were measured.

In March 2008, the federal government decided in a further step to apply the standard cost model to EU regulations and not to the bureaucratic burdens of the citizens (following the Dutch model only for selected, heavily burdened groups of people such as the disabled or people in need of care).

National Regulatory Control Council

The Federal Government is accompanied and supported by the National Regulatory Control Council (NKR), which has been newly established as part of the program. As an independent body, it advises the legislature and reviews new regulations with regard to future bureaucratic burdens. The application of the SKM is prescribed in Section 2 (3) NNKRG.

criticism

• Critics of the standard cost model fear that constitutionally and democratically required information obligations and the associated “bureaucracy” will be reduced.
• The model is an estimation method that can deliver distorted results in individual cases (this is, however, also clearly stated in the assumptions of the model).
• Even if the method is seen as a way of depoliticizing the debate about a more efficient design of regulations, the estimation results themselves are already the subject of political disputes. Relief is difficult to achieve in the political process, as has already been observed in other user states.
• The relief provided by the more efficient structuring of information obligations may not be perceived by companies, as the individual company is only slightly relieved.

• Due to the special features of a coalition government, the standard cost model also became the target of political maneuvers between CDU / CSU and SPD-led ministries. This is why there are probably considerable differences of opinion within the federal government on methodological issues. B. on the so-called "no-matter-of-fact costs", the costs of bookkeeping and the information obligations imposed by private law, which have to be fulfilled for business reasons (e.g. doctor issues an invoice).

• Only a part of all information obligations are cost drivers. After more than 2000 of the (previously estimated) most costly information obligations had been measured in a laborious manner by autumn 2007, the remaining legal provisions were estimated by the Federal Statistical Office with little or no burden. More than 3500 results and thus more than half of the previous results are so-called zero measurements.

International experience

The standard cost model is now used throughout Europe to measure the bureaucratic burdens of business, citizens and administration. The EU has also set itself the goal of reducing the burden of EU regulations by 25% by 2012.

Switzerland already has various instruments for the exchange of information between citizens, business, administration and politics, which are also used to reduce the bureaucratic burden of new regulations (e.g. consultation procedures ). As a result, the standard cost model in Switzerland is only used in addition to the existing instruments.

literature

• H. Brinkmann, T. Ernst: Bertelsmann Stiftung: Modern regulation for Germany - measurement methods as part of a comprehensive regulatory reform, recommendations of the Bertelsmann Stiftung . 2005.
• T. Ernst: Bertelsmann Stiftung: The “Standard Cost Model” - report from an information trip to the Netherlands. Berlin 2005.
• European Commission: Developing an EU common methodology for assessing administrative costs imposed by EU legislation - Report on the pilot phase . Brussels 2005.
• D. Charité, P. Kirkegaard, G. Svensson, J. Greve: The standard cost model - concept for the definition and quantification of the administrative effort for companies through state regulation. 2005.
• University of Applied Sciences d. Medium-sized companies: Kreibohm, Zülka, Kaltenbrunner: Standard cost model - First German manual for measuring and reducing administrative burdens for companies and businesses in Germany. Bielefeld 2005.
• Richard Merk et al. (Hrsg.): Bureaucracy reduction and bureaucracy cost measurement in the Federal Republic of Germany - strategies and models with special consideration of foreign experiences. Bielefeld 2005.
• M. Richter, M. Schorn: A definition of the concept of bureaucracy costs for politics and research, publications on economic and political research No. 1. IWP Institute for Economic and Political Research Richter & Schorn, 2004.
• M. Schorn: A concept for the assessment of the consequences of bureaucracy - summary of a study commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labor. Writings on economic and political research No. 1, IWP Institute for Economic and Political Research Richter & Schorn, 2004.
• J. Slodowicz: Possible uses of the standard cost model: An analysis of the Swiss context. In: The national economy. Volume 80, H. 9, 2007, pp. 63-65.

Web links

• Introduction of the standard cost model - method manual of the federal government. (PDF) 
• Internet offer of the federal government to reduce bureaucracy
• Information on the SKM at the Federal Statistical Office
• Various studies on the applicability and the advantages and disadvantages of the standard cost model ( Memento from April 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
• Administrative Burdens Reduction ( Memento of January 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) The EU initiative to reduce administrative burdens
• International Standard Cost Model Network

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Less bureaucracy in Germany. Bertelsmann Foundation (online , PDF; 158 kB)
2. ↑ C. Böhret, G. Konzendorf: Handbook of Legal Impact Assessment (GFA) - laws, ordinances, administrative regulations. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2001.
3. ↑ Reduction of bureaucracy and better regulation. In: bundesregierung.de
4. ↑ Methods manual of the federal government. In: destatis.de
5. ↑ Jan Slodowicz: Possible uses of the standard cost model: An analysis of the Swiss context.