| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The structural implementation of gender equality in Performance Management is one major part of a comprehensive strategy to reform the Austrian budget system. All in all, the reform was being planned and implemented from 2004 to 2013.
Preliminary phase (1990s-2003): Up to 2000 the budget formulation in Austria was very traditional, highly legalistic and input-oriented with no focus on gender equality. This led to growing dissatisfaction within the federal administration. Therefore the budget administration within the Ministry of Finance started to develop reform ideas to counter those problems. In 2000 the government decided to establish an interministerial working group on gender mainstreaming. First pilot projects concerned new forms of budget flexibility, performance information and gender mainstreaming started in 2000-2002. These pilot projects focused only on a number of agencies across the federal public administration and did not comprised the whole federal administration system.
Planning phase (2004-2008): The development of this project and the according planning phase took four years. The results from the pilot projects were very encouraging and demanding a comprehensive implementation. Moreover, first gender objectives came up voluntarily at the ministries in 2004. In terms of improvement and offering a comprehensive system, international standards were to be elected and compared with the pilot projects to create a comprehensive steering model for the Austrian federal budget. To reach this objective, mainly the OECD (Working Party of Senior Budget Officials) was used as information pool by asking for a report on Austria (Budgeting in Austria, 2007). Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance in collaboration with the Federal Chancellery, being responsible for the performance management including the gender equality aspect of this budget reform, developed the reform model and discussed it with important and relevant stakeholders (Q5) to gain broad commitment.
Afterwards, it was clear which model was to be applied for Austria and when stakeholders and the political parties were supporting the model, the legal base of the structural implementation of gender equality could be based. Therefore, the gender equality in performance management has been based on the constitution as budgetary principle since its adoption in December 2007. In terms of preparing and supporting the ministries concerning their new tasks, respectively gender equality, manuals and checklists on gender responsive budgeting and gender mainstreaming in legislation were provided by the Federal Chancellery.
Implementation phase 1 (2009-2012): From 2009 on the Austrian Budget structure has been changed and considered a newly mid-term expenditure framework in addition to the annual budget, budget chapters and program budgeting. However, concerning gender equality and impact assessment, the impact dimension of gender equality which should be assessed in case has been developed. Concerning this, an amendment to the budget act was needed and adopted in 2012.
Along the way, the ministers decided in September 2011 that internal and from external source drawn data and information should be gender differentiated collected, evaluated and illustrated. Moreover, the budget IT-tool and the impact assessment IT tool where enhanced respectively established.
In preparation for the implementation phase 2 which totally regards the structural implementation of gender equality, the federal chancellery started with undertaking trainings, seminars and consultancy for 2013. In addition, the ministries had already to apply the constitutional based budgetary principle of gender equality for planning the budget 2013. This process started in February 2012 and ended in October 2012 through passing the budget by the Parliament.
Implementation phase 2 (2013 - ): Since January 2013 public administration at federal level has been managed according to the principle of outcome orientation. Since then, the principle of equality of women and men plays an exceptional role in performance management and impact assessment.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The Ministry of Finance created a comprehensive steering model for the Austrian federal budget. The performance management and its gender priority were part of this comprehensive model. In the following, this draft model was discussed with the hereinafter stakeholders until it was passed. Considering this broad reform it was crucial to ensure that the reform would not depend on the existing political constellation, but would survive different governments. Thus, the reform integrated all political parties represented in Parliament. Consequently, an informal parliamentary reform committee was established. Since the implementation, the Parliament is responsible for the political control concerning the pursuit of gender equality. In the field of Gender Responsive Budgeting the Federal Chancellery’s role is to monitor, support and develop the methods, processes and results of the gender equality objectives and activities. In this sense the Federal Chancellery trains and consults the ministries, assesses the budget information, reports the evaluation results to the Parliament as well as to the public and coordinates the Austrian strategy on gender equality. Further stakeholders are leaders of the budget managing units of the supreme organs and ministries. They are responsible for the operational implementation of the elements of performance management, especially for the gender equality objectives and the concerning actions. The budget managing bodies are responsible externally in the context of total budgetary planning and execution for the outcome information on the level of budget chapters and global budgets to the Parliament. In addition, the Court of Auditors also acts as major stakeholder. Therefore, it is heavily involved in outcome and service evaluation as an independent agency of the Parliament. Finally, every supreme organ and every ministry had to nominate an appointee for gender mainstreaming. Therefore, they obtain an important role concerning gender equality in the fields of performance management and regulatory impact assessment.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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According to financial crisis and austerity programs (for example the Austrian hiring freeze for the federal public administration) it was prerequisite avoiding additional expenses and keeping the financial costs as low as possible. Regarding this, only technical costs for implementing and extending IT-Tools incurred. The concerned IT-tools are used for data handling, which were financed jointly by the Federal Chancellery and the Ministry of Finance.
However, within the organizations personnel was needed to face the new activities concerning the gender equality dimension in the performance management and the regulatory impact assessment. Therefore the supreme organs and ministries asked for gender equality appointees as well as for experts in the field of performance data and regulatory impact assessment. Moreover the named stakeholders had also to concern experts in these issues. In addition, the Federal Performance Management Office was established at the Federal Chancellery to coordinate, support and monitor the implementation at all supreme organs and federal ministries. Referring to the circumstance of hiring freeze and the need of additional staff, the implementation of the reform was only possible by effective task review, process optimization and redeployment. In conclusion only in house arrangements enabled the reform which was a reform in public administration itself.
The in house arrangements concerning redeployment and assigning existing staff with new functions required in-depth education in the fields of performance data in general and gender equality in particular. The education responsibility was assumed the Federal Performance Management Office of the Federal Chancellery. It provided and still provides training, seminars and consultancy for conducting performance management and regulatory impact assessment. Therefore, a great number of trainings and conferences were organized. The so-called “platform-meeting” with representatives of all supreme organs and ministries is still in place and is held regularly. In addition, the FPMO also provided manuals and checklists for daily business. The supply of all these educational measures of the FPMO was demanded numerously and scored well.
According to a high quality implementation, a bigger number of trainers and change agents also supported line ministries during the booster phase and knowledge was pooled from social partners, academia and the OECD. Finally, all important information was presented on our permanent homepage www.oeffentlicherdienst.gv.at.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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First and most important, the principle of gender equality in budget law was laid down in the constitution to ensure a continuing implementation. Likewise, gender equality was tied to this new law in a way that ensures, that all federal ministries and public bodies have to develop gender goals within their respective policy fields and consider the impact on gender equality for all new laws, regulations and major projects. However, any legal provisions can only be a fundament for a successful implementation of a reform.
Secondly, since the implementation, for the very first time, every supreme organ and every ministry has to formulate one out of five annual outcome objectives and corresponding activities and indicators concerning pursuing gender equality. Hence, the equality of women and men is the only policy to be considered by all ministries and supreme organs in performance management as well as in regulatory impact assessment.
Moreover, the implementation and the hereafter execution process lead to an extensive momentous development. In this regard, at the end of 2013 the newly elected government decided to develop a multi-dimensional Austrian strategy on gender equality across all supreme organs and ministries on the federal level. This issue was even laid down in the new working program of the federal government. By achieving this, the stakeholders are working together, coordinated by the Federal Chancellery.
The gender equality map determines the fourth output. At a glance, it is made transparent which supreme organs and ministries set which priorities concerning gender equality and could this objectives been achieved last year. Through clustering these objectives in groups (labor market, environment & infrastructure, legal framework and certainty, heightened awareness and competence training, protection against gender based violence) it is illustrated on which policy area the public administration focuses on and which will be rather neglected. Moreover, it shows whether the Austrian strategy on gender equality will be pursued.
Finally, an important output is that through defining and evaluating the achievement of the gender equality objectives and by reporting the results to the Parliament by the Federal Chancellery, the Parliament is given an evidence-based support for political control. This report on outcome orientation serves the Parliament with information about whether the government could keep its promises or the reasons why it couldn’t. In this regard the government and the public administration are forced achieving actual gender equality in Austria.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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As explained previously, the system of performance management in Austria has two distinct levels: performance budgeting and regulatory impact assessment. Accordingly evaluations and the monitoring of progress take place on both levels.
Whereas all impact assessments have to be evaluated within five years, each budget, its proposed outcomes and indicators are evaluated in the subsequent year. All ministries and public bodies therefore need to collect and transmit all the information about target and actual numbers for all their indicators and provide written statements for the state of their fields and explanations for the development of their numbers. All this data is compiled into a report and after a thorough quality assurance by the Federal Performance Management Office (FPMO) submitted to Parliament. A similar procedure is in place for all evaluations of the ex-ante impact assessments. These too, are collected by the FPMO and submitted to the Parliament.
Therefore Parliament is now able, when discussing and adopting new laws to tap into the experience and outcomes of previous regulation. In the context of the evaluation of the budget and its performance management goals, the Parliament can use this information when debating the following budget. In the area of gender equality an overview (“gender equality map”) of all gender objectives and outcomes is also provided by the FPMO, so the state of this issue can be discussed in coherent approach and new objectives can be set in a strategic manner when discussing the next budget.
These evaluations and the subsequent reports to Parliament are not only used to discuss the merits of individual goals or regulations. They also serve as the basis for assessments of the whole system as they evidently show areas that can be considered best-practice side by side with others where more effort is needed in terms of efficiently using this tool in the policy cycle.
In addition to these inherent assessments of the system there are of course ongoing efforts to analyze the system from an outside perspective. One is a recent study by the Hertie School of Governance (Berlin) that specifically analyzed performance budgeting and impact assessment in Austria. Another evaluation process has been initiated by the Federal Ministry of Finance to explore the effects of the budget reform within the public administration. As gender equality is a core element of this reform, results will show how these innovations support the further enhancement of gender equality.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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The implementing of new instruments can be accompanied by a range of potential obstacles and resistances against the unknown and unaccustomed. So when implementing performance management and the associated gender equality directive it was essential to build a considerable amount of momentum and support both within and from outside the administration. The message has to conveyed that change is both necessary and inevitable. Especially in the field of gender objectives, there previously was a lack of strategy, coordination and cooperation within the administrative bodies. On level of application, in the beginning of the reform indicators and activities differed highly in respect of quality and ambition. In addition, with gender equality measures often more than one policy field is affected and multiple stakeholders are involved, so that objectives were sometimes over-ambitious which meant hardly attainable by single institutions. When defining gender objectives, indicators must be specified to be used to make the objectives measurable. Especially in the beginning some institutions refrained from using international indicators and opted for simple indicators like website visits in order to use very current numbers thereby however missing out on more meaningful analyses.
In order to overcome these obstacles the Performance Management Office has set several activities varying from regularly consultancy and training for the ministries and supreme organs to providing handbooks and guidelines with strategic information to increase the quality of the outcome information. In addition, through performance reporting it is assured that the success of the political level is monitored and assessed. As a result the ministers are held responsible for their activities which will also contribute to improve the level of quality. Consequently, the office takes its responsibility of coordinating the gender equality objectives on the federal level into a coherent overall strategy for Austria to integrate the different policy areas.
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