Case Study of the Implementation of Business Process Management in Public Administration in Germany, Switzerland and Austria

In the private sector business process management is a common and well-established practice. In the public administration in Europe, this does not hold true to the same degree. However, currently we observe some considerable challenges. Important keywords such as eGovernment, networking, interoperability, compliance and governance and their relation to the administration processes are getting increasing focus. As a result, process management is gaining importance in public administration, especially where the execution of business activities or electronic integration of the process handling is concerned. However, many insights about the successful implementation of process management cannot be directly transferred to public authorities, as there exist important differences to the private sector. For instance, traditional process reengineering approaches cannot be applied in public authorities due to the legal and political conditions. Further, public authorities often face other challenges than industrial enterprises. The wide range of services which are typically offered by public authorities represent a particular challenge in this context. Hence, this paper focuses on the different implementation strategies of BPM in public administration. We investigated and compared the approaches to business process management in the public administration of three countries, namely Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. We conducted 13 interviews in the respective countries and examined the different ways in which these countries handle process management. The goal of the paper is to provide insights on how process management can be successfully introduced in public authorities. As there exist almost no insights on the implementation of process management in public authorities, our findings represent a first step towards a solid understanding of how BPM can be successfully brought to public authorities.