Business Process Assessment and Evaluation in Public Administrations using Activity Based Costing

Public administrations in Germany currently face challenges of cost reduction and modernization. Furthermore, Pan-European directives foster process harmonization and introduction of IT-supported and optimized processes. Hereby activity-based costing can be a useful instrument for process assessment and evaluation. Especially through the introduction of New Public Management and double-entry accounting Public Administrations in Germany now get the opportunity to use cost-centered accounting mechanisms to assess process performance and evaluate their activities in a holistic concept. Process Modeling can be a useful instrument to help the public administrations to structure their activities and capture information about them and thereby create a basis for activity-based costing. Therefore, the aim of this article is combining the domain specific process modeling method PICTURE and concept of activity-based costing for supporting Public Administrations in process assessment and evaluation

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING PAPER IMPACT ASSESSMENT Common Agricultural Policy towards 2020 ANNEX 8 {COM(2011) 625 final} {COM(2011) 626 final} {COM(2011) 627 final} {COM(2011) 628 final} {COM(2011) 629 final} {COM(2011) 630 final} {COM(2011) 631 final} {SEC(2011) 1154 final}. SEC (2011) 1153 final, 12.10.2011

En los últimos tempos la educación infantil ha adquirido especial relevancia en el marco de las políticas educacionales de los países latinoamericanos y en especial de Chile (CONTRERAS, HERRERA; LEYTON, 2007; DIEZ, 2011; DUSSAILLANT, 2009; TOKMAN, 2010). La investigación centra su atención en la calidad educativa y, en particular, en los procesos autoevaluativos que demuestran los niños de edades tempranas. Desde una perspectiva paradigmática cuantitativa, apoyada de reportes cualitativos, el estudio presenta la capacidad explicativa de las variables metacognición, autorregulación, autoeficacia, lenguaje y autoconcepto, respecto del desarrollo de la autoevaluación y su vinculación con mejores niveles de logros en párvulos de cinco a seis años. Los hallazgos muestran que la autoevaluación es una dimensión que muestra diversos niveles de expresión en el grupo investigado, fuertemente influenciada por las profesionales del área, tal como se aprecia en los discursos infantiles. Además, las variables analizadas presentan diferentes grados de contribución a la explicación de la autoevaluación en el grupo estudiado

Assessment Of Interoperability: The Case Of e-Government Services

Governments started e-government strategies to renew the public sector and eliminate existing bureaucracy and therefore reduce costs. Interoperability appears as the mean for accomplishing the interlinking of information systems, applications and ways of working not only within governments but also in their interaction with the administration, enterprises and public sector. The main source of administration costs is the traditional use of paper as the linkage element between public agencies. Integrated electronic processes between public agencies can be the solution to reduce these costs and create a more efficient public sector. This paper proposes an approach for measuring the benefit of incorporating interoperability in e-government. This approach is based on the identification and analysis of certain processes (business process modelling) and on the activity based costing method. In particular, this approach concerns the measuring of benefit of applying interoperability in e-government services

A model to assess the feasibility of public-private partnership for social housing

The effects of the world economic and financial crisis, which began in 2007 and is still in progress, has made increasingly sharp the line of demarcation between those able to access home ownership on the free market, and those unable to do so. For the European Union's member states, Social Housing (SH) policies include all the initiatives aimed at providing housing support for all the weak segments of the population; these policies have declined differently by different Member States according to their specific needs. In Italy, the growing need for SH accommodation together with the shortage of public resources makes developing forms of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) necessary. Evaluation techniques like Break-Even Analysis and Contribution Margin Analysis are useful in planning interventions including SH initiatives in the context of real estate development or retraining initiatives in PPP (in negotiation processes or in project financing). These kinds of techniques especially allow evaluation of public and private convenience in PPP. In the present work, an assessment procedure has been structured: first the main parameters of a settlement of SH initiative in PPP are defined; subsequently, it is possible to assess the feasibility and the financial balance of the initiative itself. The procedure has been applied to a case study: the interrupted initiative of self-renovation in Via Grotta Perfetta 315 in Rome (Italy)

Sustainable Management and Total Quality Management in Public Organizations with Outsourcing

The aim of this paper is to explore how Total Quality Management (TQM) can act as a foundation and key catalyst for developing Sustainable Management and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within Public Organizations. In the public sector we have too often experienced low quality services, which have generated and perpetuated low expectations. The result has been great dissatisfaction and frustration, but not much action (Gaster, 1995). As any other organization, the Public Organization can apply TQM and thereby accomplish some improvements.CSR is an emerging topic within organizational research and praxis. It has parallels to sustainable development, environmental protection, social equity and economic growth.This paper shows specifically how to incorporate sustainability into a quality system by using a model that shows the relation between investment in quality and the variables fame and reputation. The interest in the nature of the relationship between TQM and CSR is long-standing. The aim of the quality movement is to enable organizations to deliver high quality services in the shortest possible time to market, at minimum cost, and in a manner that emphasises human dignity, work satisfaction, and mutual and long-term loyalty between the organization and its stakeholders. As such, TQM has a strong ethical dimension, advocating the importance of considering the interests of stakeholders (Oppenheim & Przasnyski, 1999). In this paper outsourcing in Public Organizations is considered as an instrument for raising the qualitative level of services and thus for developing CSR. First, the definitions of CSR are discussed. Second, the ethics in quality are described, followed by a discussion on existing quality models with regard to CSR. Third, the relationship between TQM and CSR is considered. We have analyzed the strong similarity between TQM and CSR, and outsourcing analysis is used to illustrate the combined CSR/TQM approach in Public Organizations. Finally, we have highlighted the main factors of resistance to externalization in Public Administrations and how these can be overcome by developing a risk management approach.

Does Green Public Procurement lead to Life Cycle Costing (LCC) adoption?

Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is rarely used in public procurement and public institutions have yet to fully understand its potential value for sustainable procurement. The new European Directive on Public Procurement is, however, designed to position LCC as central to sustainable sourcing. Although previous studies have identified positive correlations between Green Public Procurement Policies (GPP) and LCC, it is still unclear how public institutions can further adopt LCC practices by leveraging their experience of green sourcing. In this study an organizational learning theoretical perspective is taken to investigate the circumstances under which public administrations’ experience of GPP – considered as a way of integrating the dimension of environmental sustainability into the sourcing process – stimulates their LCC learning and capabilities – considered as a way to include the sustainability economic dimension. The goal is to understand if the adoption of GPP can stimulate the internalisation of LCC in public tenders. A multinomial logistic regression was conducted using a sample of 120 public administrations located in different countries. The results show that experience of GPP stimulates the internalisation of LCC at a public level, but only under specific conditions. The study contributes to the Sustainable Supply Management literature, being one of the first studies in the field adopting an organizational learning theoretical lens to review the role of experience as significant opportunity to develop capabilities. It also contributes to the organizational learning theory, by confirming that experience can aid learning but only in specific environmental contexts

A Framework for the Classification of Management Control Tools - Experiences with Activity-Based Costing in the German Public Sector

Purpose: To find a suitable framework for the categorisation of management control tools as guidance for a purpose-oriented choice of management control tools. This is done by applying the iron triangle in the case of Activity-based costing (ABC) in the German public sector. Thereby the ABC adoption in the German public sector is analysed, including the discussion of purpose-oriented versus trend-driven management. Methodology: A quantitative empirical study among German municipalities is performed. Thereby the data is collected through a web-based questionnaire. The data analysis is done on basis of univariate methods as well as with a logistic regression analysis. Theoretical perspectives: The idea to develop a framework for the purpose-oriented choice of management control tools is based on the idea of contingency theory. Evidence concerning the use of ABC in Germany supplemented with findings from other contexts serves as a starting point for the empirical work in this thesis. Empirical foundation: Empirical data is gathered through a web-based self-completion questionnaire from high-ranked civil servants in German municipalities. The questionnaire is developed based on relevant literature as well as insights from practice which are gained through two pre-interviews. Conclusions: The iron triangle is not found suitable for the categorisation of ABC in the context of the German public sector as its three dimensions ‘time’, ‘cost’ and ‘quality’ do not cover the emerging area of transparency. Concerning the use of ABC in the German public sector the most important influential factor seems to be the size of the municipality while hype tendencies imply a rather trend-driven adoption

ISAC6+ Delivering Smarter Administration through innovation - a Benefits Realisation approach to ensuring success.

The paper describes how the Project Management discipline of benefits realisation has been applied to an EU funded E-government initiative. It explores the benefits of using this approach, the challenges to be addressed, and suggest a framework for applying the approach to other local and national e-government initiatives. One of the key project objectives is to demonstrate through the pilot that implementation of the iSAC6+ system will provide value for money by delivering the desired benefits both to government office users and citizens. The approach described here focuses on costs and benefits generated by use of the system. There are staff costs for training, support and operation, technical costs for integrating iSAC6+ in to existing systems and websites, and more significantly organisational costs for designing and implementing new procedures and working practices. Citizens too will incur costs to access and use the service. In iSAC6+ we have created a model of costs and benefits which can be applied in the short term to the pilot, and in the longer term to a much larger number of public organisations. The aim of the Benefits Realisation model is to demonstrate that iSAC6+ is capable of delivering value for money, and thus to justify the investment needed for expanding its use. Information Technology project success or failure is traditionally judged against objectives set during initial project planning. Enterprises, both public and private sector, have found this approach inadequate because long term costs and benefits do not occur until after the project has completed. Benefits Realisation emerged in the 1990s and developed two roles: a discipline for anticipating and quantifying the expected value of a project in terms of the costs and benefits which will accrue after the project itself is complete; and an over-arching project management philosophy. The paper uses the case study experience to comment upon these two different perspectives. The model developed within the project is based upon the recognised public sector costing formula, the Standard Cost model (SCM) but goes much further by integrating it into a Benefits Realisation tool which creates an audit trail from organisational strategic aims through to detailed cost measures for both quantitative and qualitative incidences