The modernization of state and administration involves structural issues relating to the distribution of tasks and competencies, but also many other issues relating to the resilience of the public sector and its future viability. In addition to many structural deficits, which have come to light in the crisis situations of recent years, the administration also finds it to be increasingly difficult, even in its day-to-day business, to meet the expectations of citizens, businesses and those responsible for politics. Not only is the increasing complexity of the laws to be enforced having a negative impact on the performance and quality of government tasks, but also the demographic shift and the increasing shortage of skilled workers.

Efficient administration - future-proof state

In addition to digitization, administrative modernization is therefore also an important topic for the NKR and a decisive lever for reducing bureaucracy. To this end, the NKR presented a comprehensive position paper with ten specific recommendations in the summer of 2021. In it, the NKR made the central statement that politics and administration should pay more attention to the structural issues of good governance, even if these are perceived as "tough nuts to crack" and promise no visible short-term success. In order to reach down to the structural and cultural roots of the administration, the NKR believes that reform efforts should be systemic in nature and not merely selective. This requires general mechanisms and incentive structures that are incorporated into everyday political and administrative life to such a degree that they become self-perpetuating and sustainable cultural change can be initiated.

NKR recommendations for sustainable modernization

The NKR has received numerous positive responses to its recommendations on administrative modernization. Among other things, they were also a topic at the 12th Bellevue Forum of the Federal President on the future of democracy in the fall of 2021 and on its topic "Was kann der Staat? Lektionen aus der Pandemie” (“What is the state able to do? Lessons from the pandemic”). In the NKR’s view, the recommendations remain relevant and are in fact gaining relevance once more against the backdrop of growing dissatisfaction with the state and its administration.

Two of the ten recommendations are highlighted here due to their particular references to administrative digitization, better regulation and the reduction of bureaucracy:

• Government as a platform: This principle, which was already described in the 2014 study "Stein-Hardenberg 2.0", represents an approach that has been widely tried and tested in the IT sector. Following this approach, the question of the optimal distribution of tasks in an administrative structure would be evaluated according to how transaction, development and operating costs in the provision of services can be reduced many times over while at the same time increasing the quality of services rendered. By no longer maintaining all means of production and by no longer carrying out all process steps themselves, administrative entities can “factor out” sub-processes and cross-sectional tasks. If standardized services (e.g. income checks) were handled by a specialized service centre operating on a supraregional or nationwide basis instead of in each administrative entity, higher degrees of efficiency could be achieved than would be the case in each individual entity. This would mean that each entity or local entity would not have to maintain its own structures, procedures and operating resources for all the tasks that arise. These issues play just as much of a role in the amendment of the OZG as do assessments of the practical and digital readiness of laws and the search for the implementation alternative with the least amount of bureaucracy.
• Audits, stress tests, performance comparisons, “Stiftung Verwaltungstest” (“Administrative Test Foundation”): Only what is measured can be managed sensibly. Various instruments are available to determine the performance and crisis resilience of any given government agency, regional authority or an entire country, to identify the need for improvement and to recognize changes over time. Depending on their gradation, audits and stress tests can be used purely internally, they can be used in combination with public performance comparisons, but they can also provide some competition and provide policymakers with valuable management information. In this way, the idea of a Stiftung Verwaltungstest (German for “Administrative Test Foundation”) also stands for the recognition that certain incentive structures could be helpful in raising awareness and willingness in politics and society to invest sufficient attention, political capital and resources into measures of government modernization. As part of the amendment of the OZG, the OZG dashboard should therefore be revised into a comparison tool that reflects the current and valid status of administrative digitization in Germany.

The NKR is aware that the area of administrative modernization includes a large number of other topics and that very different priorities are (and must be) set at the various administrative levels. In particular, recruitment, development and remuneration represent major challenges in times of the demographic shift. In addition, there is the broad field of accelerating planning and approval procedures, whose bureaucratic burden depends decisively on good management practices at the local level, but also to a considerable extent on substantive legal requirements from federal and European law. It is precisely these legal and organizational interfaces in a multi-level state system that need to be addressed. The NKR sees this as a focal point of its work, which it intends to illuminate more strongly in the future.