4. Discussion
Norbert Ahrend, Konrad Walser and Henrik Leopold
Summarizing the findings from the comparative analysis, we can make the following statements. The public administrations of all three countries have recognized the necessity of introducing BPM. The deviating strategies towards the implementation of BPM result from differences in culture, differences in complexity due to the overall size of the country, and the preexistence of different technical solutions. As far as it can be assessed from the current analysis, there are no indicators that one of the strategies will be more successful in the future. Rather, it can be expected that all three strategies will eventually result in the implementation of BPM in public authorities. However, some maturity levels can be only reached, if according measures are taken. For instance, it is rather unlikely that the full potential is used if there is no opportunity for public authorities to exchange knowledge and experiences with regard to process management and optimization. Another aspect is given by the overall pace of the BPM implementation. From the analysis, we derived the following suggestions for accelerating the BPM implementation:
• Germany: Standardization might accelerate and improve the orientation of the current BPM initiatives in Germany. Since there are currently hardly any standards available, the process of voluntary agreement among the public authorities may unnecessarily slow down the success of the overall BPM initiative.
• Switzerland: Strengthening the business side could accelerate the BPM implementation in Switzerland. In particular, stronger impulses from the business side are needed. Consequently, the business must be accordingly integrated in the decision processes.
• Austria: Making the acquired knowledge available via process exchange platforms, could increase the success of Austria with respect to the interlocking of business and IT. As a result, the acquired knowledge will be readily available to a big audience.
Finally, we can use the analysis to derive some general success factors for the implementation of BPM in public administration. Note, that these findings are not representative, but rather represent first insights. Following the structure of the employed comparison criteria, the subsequent list summarizes the main hypotheses we derived from the conducted analysis:
• Framework conditions: The analysis suggests that the framework conditions do not have a big impact on the overall BPM success. Although, the three countries have similar conditions, they followed totally different strategies. A critical point in this context is the political backing. Without management commitment a holistic approach as BPM cannot be successfully implemented.
• Input variables: For the efficient execution of processes it is important to avoid media disruptions. Accordingly, it is significant that the process data is available in a digital format. Here Austria impressively demonstrated its success. However, the Austrian success must be discussed against the background of the small size of Austria. In Germany, the enforcement of a consequent digitalization would be much more challenging.
• Methods and standards: Especially for administrations it can be a promising strategy to first focus on support processes. By harmonizing processes, which are shared by all administration authorities, BPM success can be effectively realized. Concerning standards, it is essential that partnerships among the different authorities can be easily and effectively established. The example of Switzerland has shown that standards can be actually the result of a bottom‐up process. However, therefore it is of prior importance that the authorities are well connected.
• Tools: The most important characteristic of a tool is the support of the previously mentioned partnerships. Tools should not be a self‐purpose, but consequently support authorities in exchanging ideas and insights.
• Challenges: The consequent interlocking of business and IT must be considered as an important factor for the BPM implementation.
Finally, the findings of this paper have to be discussed from the perspective of some limitations. As discussed in Section 2, the methodology of this paper falls in the category of qualitative research methods. Hence, our findings are not representative. The limited number of cases and interviews do not allow us to draw generalizable conclusions. However, the goal of qualitative research is of a different nature. As the insights in the research field of BPM in public administration are currently very limited, the findings of our paper represent an important first step. As a result, the insights from this paper have implications for both, theory and practice. In further research our findings can guide future qualitative research initiatives or they could form the basis of a
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