The tool meant to track dozens of deadlines across the state is itself only being piloted in three agencies from 2026. Schleswig-Holstein’s Digital Strategy 2026 shows the gap between vision and steering.
Perspectives
Four in Five Believe the State Is Overwhelmed
79 per cent see the state as overwhelmed — the lowest level of trust ever recorded since the dbb citizen survey first asked the question in 2019.
Why Public Administrations Struggle with Data
The answer is usually: experience, judgement, common sense. That is not the exception in public administration, it is the norm. Anyone who has worked
Why More Staff Will Not Solve the Administration’s Overload
Why More Staff Will Not Solve the Administration's Overload A skills shortage is the most obvious explanation for an overloaded administration. It falls short. In conversations with senior managers in the public sector, one sentence comes up especially often: we simply do not have enough staff. This explanation is tempting, because it is easy to...
Scenario Planning for Staffing Requirement Assessment: Why Public Authorities Need to Think Ahead Now
Workforce planning is still seen by many public authorities as a purely administrative task: fill posts when they become vacant, launch recruitment when the need is acute. This reactive stance
Demographic change: the twofold challenge facing public administration
Hardly any public authority has a plan B for that. Demographic change is hitting public administration on two fronts at once. On one side, more than 1.5 million
The VESPRA method in detail: from the first data collection to the implementation plan
Organisational reviews rarely fail for want of will. They fail because analysis and implementation are not thought through together. This is exactly where the VESPRA method comes in.
Administrative Efficiency Analysis (VEA): why the sequence decides success
Many authorities optimise everywhere at once and still feel no relief. The reason rarely lies in the methods, but in the sequence in which they are used.
Why overload has become the normal state in public administration
Senior managers in public administration have been reporting growing pressure for years. More tasks, more requirements, more expectations from politicians and the public, with resources that remain the same or even
Assessing staffing requirements: six methods compared
Anyone setting out to assess the staffing requirements of an administrative unit faces a choice that is rarely made deliberately. In practice many local authorities reach for the method that has grown up in their own
Why the public sector skills shortage becomes a problem of trust
An overstretched state shows itself in the planning application that has been sitting for months, or the citizens’ office reachable only by appointment weeks away.
First steps towards strategic HR management in public administration
In many local authorities and federal state agencies the HR department still runs to a familiar pattern. Posts are advertised when they fall vacant. Requests are dealt with when they come in.
Skills shortage in the public service – why it is not just about more posts
While local authorities report a deficit of 24.8 billion euros, another problem remains unsolved. According to the dbb Monitor 2025, the public service is currently short of around 570,000 staff – some 20,000 more than a year earlier. The finding is unambiguous: this has long ceased to be only about new posts. It is about which tasks the state...
Record deficit in local authorities – an alarm signal with no way out?
The Statistisches Bundesamt reports a local-authority deficit of 24.8 billion euros for 2024. That is not merely a figure – it stands for empty coffers, overstretched administrations and growing unease in the town halls. The deficit marks more than a financial imbalance: it is a sign of an administration reaching its limits. The current...