The re-election has just confirmed how dissatisfied Berliners are with the performance of their administration. The undesirable developments are the result of decades of failure of the political and administrative leadership. They have not been able to bring the old-fashioned, rampant monopoly of administration up to speed with timely comprehensive reforms. On the other hand, trade unions and the main staff council have always been helpful in reform efforts.
Erich Pätzold was Senator for Health from 1973 to 1981 and Senator for the Interior from 1989 to 1991
Now, not only in politics, many people naturally call for “the” form of administration, but remain surprisingly vague, and are often poorly informed. With administrative reform, some only mean digitization in public authorities, important as this aspect is.
It shimmers through that the Senate administrations could once again, in a pointless duplication of work, comprehensively patronize the districts in their local individual affairs. Key word: reintroduction of the “specialist supervision” of the Senate administrations for those district tasks that were state tasks (Reich or Prussia) until 1945; thereafter in the city-state a perverse subdivision. In 1999, technical supervision was abolished and instead the Senate had a legal right to intervene everyone district tasks have been created, which is completely sufficient.
Senate administrations distract
The counterproductive revival of technical supervision would reinforce another fundamental evil. Because some in Senate administrations would like to use excessive everyday business to justify the extent to which they are neglecting their actual task of future-oriented planning and design.
Wowereit stopped the reform
Even as a minority partner in the Senate, the SPD had pressed ahead with administrative reform until 2001 through constant pressure. Berlin was considered a reform pioneer nationwide, until the head of the red-red coalition that followed gave in to the sluggish forces of the main administration. He stopped the wave of reforms as they rolled towards the unwilling central administration after the districts with their business elements.
The SPD members of the Momper Senate, Erich Pätzold on the left, met in 2014 on the 25th anniversary of the government takeover.
There has been little reform progress since 2001, but there have been disastrous regressions: abolition of the appointment of executives, initially for a limited period (twice for five years); Relocation of the senators’ control services to the general administration – mostly the refuge of the reform opponents; Dropping the draft law on the economic modernization of the state budget regulations; Abolish the Senate Reform Steering Committee, replacing it with an Undersecretaries Committee (has existed for years; dissolved for lack of success); Renunciation of the successful external business economist as reform general manager; in the senate administrations, unlike in the districts, no business screening and budgeting; Repealing the Administrative Reform Principles Act.
Modern large cities can only be managed well and with a focus on the citizens in self-governing subdivisions. The 1999 constitutional regulation on the distribution of tasks is correct: the districts regularly responsible for local tasks according to self-government principles, the main administration for the legally determined city-wide tasks. In 1999, we optimized it task by task over a year of painstaking work. There is not much catching up to do today either. Tasks were mostly shifted to the districts. The senators and their administrations should have a clear head for the major tasks of the future, instead of getting lost in everyday life
The main administration in many parts bloated, sluggish, ineffective, remote from the citizens, largely self-sufficient and demotivating many employees.
Erich Paetzold, Senator for Health from 1973 to 1981 and Senator for the Interior from 1989 to 1991
The constitutional mandate of the head office is first and foremost planning and control. Too often this is lacking! The best way to steer it is to work intensively with the districts, to advise and vote (instead of simply decreing). If that does not help, the instruments of the General Competence Act are available (§ 6 – administrative regulations that bind the administrations uniformly; § 13a – right of intervention of the Senate). The fact that § 6 is so rarely used for control is a failure to control.
Pitiful state of affairs with the authorities
The core problem, at least in the case of larger authorities, is the inadequate internal constitution. Her pitiful condition is unimaginable to outsiders. The agency itself and the changing political leaders lack the tools to see through the various parts of the agency. Are the tasks still necessary? Do new tasks have to be taken on? Are concrete goals set everywhere? Are they achieved quickly, with the greatest possible impact and with the lowest possible cost and asset burden? In addition: Are the parts of the authority budgeted in an output-oriented manner and are they responsible for the results? Is a control service (controlling) integrated into the management of the authorities?
The business instruments for this were stipulated in the Administrative Reform Principles Act (VGG) of 1999. Unfortunately, in 2016, at the urging of the head office, the legislature allowed itself to be tempted to repeal the VGG.
There is no perspective
The result of the lack of perspective is usually muddling on as before, and with the pole in the fog. After all, the main administration is bloated in many parts, sluggish, ineffective, distant from the citizens, largely self-sufficient and demotivating many employees. It costs astronomical sums that are lacking for civic services and investments. So Berlin is driven to wear and tear. This administration can hardly cope with the day-to-day work, let alone its ministerial task of forward-looking planning and design, and that in a rapidly growing, problem-ridden cosmopolitan city.
The number of posts in the main administration, and there in the administration of the administration, is still considerably excessive, while the service to the citizen suffers, especially in the districts.
No business could compete with such antediluvian work structures. Overall we have to go to one nationwide self-optimizing System with commercial accounting (instead of mere primitive income and expenditure accounting without asset interlocking). This requires professional reform control from outside. As in the past, a single excellent management consultant is sufficient instead of the consulting firms previously commissioned with millions.
Learn from Hamburg
Such a self-optimizing With the three pillars of systematic task criticism, goal and effect orientation and process optimization, the system leads to performance and cost-effectiveness with the lowest possible use of personnel. Hamburg introduced commercial accounting in 2013, which enforces a lot of business needs. And the former Berlin and then Hamburg head of the budget department, who enforced accounting in Hamburg, would be willing to support Berlin with advice on a voluntary basis.
