NIPAG Projects

On behalf of the State Ministry of Baden-Württemberg, the NIPAG is conducting a project to evaluate the administrative regulation on intensifying public participation in planning and approval procedures.

How can an efficient environmental administration be reorganised in the face of a shortage of skilled workers and growing challenges and tasks? The project develops concepts to ensure effectiveness in challenging times.

In this study, we look at how knowledge is shared in Berlin's government. We examine the methods, content, and success of these practices. Then, based on the results of this evaluation, we can figure out what changes need to be made.

The NIPAG evaluates the higher monetary thresholds and the new pilot project for awarding direct contracts to start-ups under Baden-Württemberg’s VwV Beschaffung, and analyzes their effects.

The Saxon Regulatory Control Council supports the State Government to reduce bureaucracy and improve regulatory quality. The NIPAG evaluates the the underlying law.

The National Institute for Public Administration (NIPAG) carries out the Evaluation of Acts to Accelerate Planning Procedures.

What impact do laws have on tomorrow's generations and on fairness between different generations today? The NIPAG's testing instrument provides answers: the Intergenerational Check.

The research project explores how effective "fictitious authorisations" are in speeding up administrative procedures and what opportunities, risks, and legal challenges arise from expanding their use.

The project "Cybersecurity And The New EU Legislation" investigates the recent and upcoming legislative acts by the EU, especially the NIS-2-Directive, the Cyberresilience Act and the EU Cyber Solidarity Act.

The increasing complexity of political and administrative decisions makes leadership in the public sector all the more important. Faced with long-term challenges such as climate change, demographic change and digitalisation, the public sector and government departments are being forced to develop the best possible solutions to deliver public services under complex conditions. Leadership skills and personalities are more in demand than ever before, and in an international context there is a growing demand for the expansion of systematic personnel development measures for managers who make political and administrative decisions today and in the future. Against this background, the sub-project aims to analyse leadership development in a European comparison in order to provide the German ministerial administration with concrete recommendations for action for systematic further development at federal and state level. In the context of current and future challenges for managers, the project will examine the extent to which leadership development is already aligned with emerging change processes and what needs are manifested in this context.

Recent years have seen a proliferation of initiatives aimed at increasing and strengthening the diversity of the public sector workforce. This has been driven not only by skills shortages, but also by the recognition that broad representation contributes to greater responsiveness in public administration. By responding better and more specifically to the concerns and needs of all sections of the population, it also strengthens the acceptance of administrative actions. Ultimately, the project aims to create a 'toolbox' for the diversity-sensitive socialisation of public administration. The focus is on the state level and includes the management and professional levels embedded there.

The public administration is increasingly becoming the largest employer in Europe, making modern recruitment and development policies of paramount importance. Human resource management also requires a medium-term perspective to enable the necessary planning of staffing needs. There is a growing need for recruitment and development tools that take into account informal skills, especially those of managers. Matching job supply and demand requires a strategy that enables the right selection of people with the right professional and technical skills, as well as the right soft skills, such as social skills, teamwork and resilience. Traditionally, public sector issues are mainly discussed at national level, although European standards sometimes overshadow national path dependencies. The project therefore aims to fill a research gap by involving experts from theory and practice from selected European countries in addressing individual research topics, in order to obtain recommendations for action for the German public administration from this 'internal perspective'.

At the heart of public values, which in simple terms can be understood as the principles that the general public consider beneficial to community life, is the orientation of state action towards the common good. This in turn is secured and promoted by a number of principles, such as adherence to the constitution and the law, loyalty to one's employer and meritocracy, which hence can also be seen as public values in a broader sense. One focus of the analysis will centre around the discussion of public values in the context of a leadership role in the public sector. The question of the general expectation of public sector managers, their ethical commitment and the optimal institutional conditions for value-based management will be explored. In addition, the role of soft law and the relationship between administrative law (administrative regulations, ministerial circulars, etc.) and provisions with external effects will be examined.

Demographic change is leading to a change in the structure of work in public authorities. The number of employable people will go down, the workforce will become older and more heterogeneous, and it will become much more difficult to recruit newly qualified staff in competition with the private sector. In addition to demographic change, various changes (e.g. the introduction of new technologies to convert analogue processes into digital ones) and new tasks, as well as the digital transformation itself (i.e. the adaptation of entire business processes or models to reflect the digital changes) are leading to new ways of working in public authorities, which mandate that employees adapt quickly to these changes. The development of skills needs to be planned proactively to ensure the performance of the administration in the future. The project builds on this need by focusing on skills planning and development in public administrations. The aim of the project is to develop a basic methodological model for forecasting tasks and the associated skills requirements, which is specifically tailored to the differentiation in levels and tasks in public administrations.

The current research programme at the National Institute for Public Administration Germany includes undertaking an administrative survey for the public administration in Germany. This instrument for surveying public administration staff has already been established in other countries, including Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. However, it has not yet been implemented systematically in Germany. While thematic or institutional surveys have been conducted, a comprehensive survey of administrative staff across different levels of administrative and policy areas has not yet been undertaken. The National Institute for Public Administration Germany administrative survey aims to fill this gap in the research landscape.

To respond effectively to the systemic challenges of multidimensional transformation of the administration, it is essential to optimise existing governance resources. Knowledge represents one of these critical resources for managing a wide range of administrative tasks. In this way, knowledge helps to improve the capacity of the administration to act by enabling administrative staff to access relevant information, to check the quality of this information, to derive knowledge from it and to make decisions based on this knowledge on how to carry out their tasks. The aim of the research project is to develop a concept for integrated knowledge management in order to make existing knowledge available for administrative practice in the best possible way in the future.

The public sector faces increasing challenges in attracting and retaining sufficient numbers of skilled staff through traditional methods. In addition to the impact of demographic change, competition from the private sector for talent is also a concern. In this context, it is vital to identify strategies for attracting skilled professionals and motivating existing employees to remain in the public sector.

The arsenal of the German police is increasingly expanding to include robotised quadrupeds: the ‘Spot’ model from Boston Dynamics, for example, delights millions of people with its dance choreographies and slapstick-like demo videos. These robots have now also been encountered by the population of Shanghai, New York, Los Angeles and Honolulu, as well as visitors to Singapore's parks - each time in the service of the police and regulatory authorities. Spot’ has also been deployed in Germany, after the state of North Rhine-Westphalia acquired two of them. The ‘Police Robots’ project looks at the use of police robots from a legal and ethical perspective.

The topic of task focussing in public administration is a prominent focus of the current research programme at the National Institute for Public Administration (NIPAG). The hierarchical line structure of public administration is proving to be inadequate in the context of new, complex tasks. The complexity and multidimensionality of the tasks and problems faced by public administrations are increasing, and the solutions to these problems require considerable effort under the use of existing resources. The resolution and management of such tasks could be significantly enhanced by collaboration between different departments and domains (to varying degrees), for example by using matrix structures with adaptive teams. Despite the inherent challenges, a greater emphasis on task orientation appears to be essential for an effective and forward-looking public administration. In this multi-year research initiative, the NIPAG is assessing and collecting data on the successful implementation of task-oriented working methods.

New Work is an approach that describes the transformation of the modern workplace. It encompasses not only new forms and models of work, but also changes in social structures and the demands placed on employees. It therefore encompasses the organisational, societal and individual levels. The National Institute for Public Administration Germany is designing a tailor-made model project for the administrations in ministries to develop new forms and models of work with the help of New Work approaches. The implementation of the model in each participating ministry will be accompanied by empirical surveys. This will primarily allow rapid access to results and secondly deliver reliable conclusions for medium and long-term planning of work forms and models.

The youth-check is a regulatory impact assessment tool that analyses the impact of legislation on young people. To raise awareness of young people's concerns early in the legislative process, the youth-check is applied to proposed legislation at the draft law stage. Its purpose is to identify and present the intended and unintended consequences of a draft law on young people. In this way, the perspectives of young people in the legislative process are strengthened and makes policymakers and administrators more aware of the independent life phase of youth.

The project is part of the reforms initiated by the Act to Strengthen Children and Youth (KJSG) passed in 2021. It serves to support local authorities that need to restructure their administrative structures within this framework. On behalf of the Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMBFSFJ), the National Institute for Public Administration Germany is supporting a pilot test of new administrative structures in the field of integration support for children and young people with disabilities in three model communities until December 2027. The reorganization of responsibilities aimed at inclusion requires administrative adjustments on the part of local authorities. The NIPAG has already developed the prerequisites for administrative structural reform and practical implementation guidelines for local authorities – in the form of roadmaps and handouts – as part of two previous projects. The current project aims to support local authorities by deepening the handouts and by gathering information about the progress of the reform.

The youth-check helps to raise awareness of young people’s concerns during the legislative process. It is a regulatory impact assessment tool to analyse the impact of federal legislation on young people aged between 12 and 27 years In order to raise awareness of the concerns of young people at an early stage in the legislative process, the youth-check is applied to proposed legislation during the draft bill stage. The youth-check is carried out by the Competence Centre Youth-Check (ComYC). The ComYC is an independent unit with a unique expertise in youth-specific regulatory impact assessment in Germany. It is the only scientific institution in Germany that carries out an accompanying regulatory impact assessment (ex-ante assessment) for all federal government bills.

There is a pressing need for research on the impact of EU law and the ECHR on the civil service in Germany. The National Institute for Public Administration Germany analyses relevant decisions of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights and draws up practical guidelines for administrative practice. These practical guidelines present the subject matter, the facts and the reasons for the decision in a concise form, evaluate and classify them in terms of European law, and consider the implications for German law.