Legal Requirements as a Brake on Efficiency? A Second Look Pays Off

Many administrations blame the law for their overload. A closer look shows that part of the perceived requirement is home-made.

Ask people in public administration why they are overloaded and you often get a quick answer: the law demands it, the standard is prescribed, the checks are mandatory. This explanation feels safe because it names an external cause. It falls short too often. A closer look at many processes shows that the actual legal basis frequently demands less than everyday practice assumes.

The overload is systemic, not a single case

Public administrations have been in a state of permanent strain for years. Task volumes grow, expectations from politics and the public rise, and staff and time resources stay limited. This description applies to nearly every level of administration and it is strikingly stable over time. This very persistence is the real finding: overload here is the result of a system in which tasks, standards and expectations all increase at once. It is a structural problem that individual senior managers or staff cannot resolve through their own effort alone.

An important consequence for practice follows from this. Anyone who traces overload exclusively back to external requirements automatically looks for the solution outside their own organisation and waits for relief from the legislator. That relief rarely arrives at the pace day-to-day work demands. The more effective starting point lies closer, directly within the organisation itself.

When standards keep tightening

A key driver of overload is the tightening of standards. This means that administrations, over time, place higher demands on their own processes than the original legal basis requires. Checks are added, documentation duties expanded, approval loops lengthened. Each individual addition seems sensible on its own, often as a reaction to a past individual case or out of concern about being challenged. Taken together, the result is a process that is considerably more demanding than what the law actually requires, without anyone having consciously decided so at any single point.

In daily practice these self-imposed standards are barely distinguished any more from the actual legal requirement. Both appear equally mandatory. Ask a member of staff why a particular check is necessary and the answer is often that it has always been done this way, or that the supervisory authority requires it. Rarely can the specific legal provision behind the requirement actually be named. This is exactly where the opportunity lies: where a standard has grown historically and is not legally binding, real room for manoeuvre exists.

Efficiency as a leadership decision

Recognising and using that room for manoeuvre is a leadership task. It is not enough to simplify individual process steps here and there. The work only becomes effective once it is systematically checked which requirement is genuinely anchored in law and which has been added over time. Michael Ahr describes in his book Effiziente Verwaltung (Efficient public administration) that genuine efficiency is not a savings instrument or a technical optimisation problem, but a steering decision that must be taken and carried by the leadership level. Isolated improvements without this systematic review often create additional effort instead of relief.

For practice this means one concrete first step: when the next process reviews come up, ask which individual requirements derive directly from a legal provision and which arose over the years as an internal precaution. This distinction creates clarity about where negotiation with the legislator is actually necessary and where the administration can act on its own, without waiting for external change. Once this distinction becomes a fixed habit in every process revision, the view of one’s own capacity to act changes noticeably.

The order matters here. Stocktaking first, then change. Anyone who dismantles standards without first clarifying which legal basis actually stands behind them risks a challenge from the supervisory authority. Anyone who knows the legal basis, by contrast, can reduce self-imposed additional requirements with confidence, because the decision rests on a verified foundation rather than an assumption. This clarity is what genuinely makes administrations more capable of acting, regardless of how quickly the legislator itself provides relief.