Karin Selhofer, Daniel Steudler – Switzerland
ABSTRACT
When two new ordinances came into force in 1993, standards for the digital format for Swiss cadastral surveying were defined. The organisational and financing structures, however, remained the same. With the growing importance of the principles of New Public Management (NPM) in political and economical life in the last three or four years, these organisational and funding structures now have to be reviewed.
This article presents some aspects of the organisational and financial issues of cadastral surveying in the age of NPM. In particular, the first experiences with the transition from an input-oriented steering approach to performance agreements between Federal and Cantonal authorities are described, and the development of corresponding controlling instruments are outlined.
RESUME
Par la mise en vigeur de deux nouvelles ordonances en 1993, les standards de la mensuration officielle suisse sous forme digitale ont été définis. Les structures organisationnelles et financières existantes sont cependant restées les mêmes. Les principes de la nouvelle gestion publique (on parle aussi de new public management NPM) prenant de plus en plus d‘importance dans la vie politique et économique ces dernières années, ces structures doivent être maintenant révisées.
Cet article présente quelques aspects organisationnels et financiers de la mensuration officielle sous l’ère du NPM. Il décrit en particulier les premières expériences faites avec les mandats de prestations qui ont été conclus entre les autorités fédérales et cantonales.
ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Mit der Inkraftsetzung von zwei neuen Verordnungen im Jahre 1993 wurden die neuen Standards der digitalen Form der Schweizerischen Katastervermessung definiert. Die organisatorischen und finanzierungstechnischen Strukturen blieben dabei unverändert. Mit der in den letzten drei, vier Jahren in Politik und Wirtschaft zunehmenden Bedeutung der Prinzipien der wirkungsorientierten Verwaltung (auch New Public Management genannt) müssen diese Strukturen nun überdacht und angepasst werden.
Dieser Artikel präsentiert einige organisatorische und finanzierungstechnische Aspekte der Schweizerischen Katastervermessung in der heutigen Zeit des New Public Management. Im Speziellen werden die ersten Erfahrungen der Übergangs von der bisherigen Input-orientierten Steuerung zum neuen Verhältnis zwischen Bund und Kantonen mittels Leistungsaufträgen und den dafür nötigen Controlling-Instrumenten dargelegt.
INTRODUCTION
Swiss cadastral surveying has gone through a remarkable reform process from a technical point of view. With the increasing national budgetary problems and the introduction of New Public Management principles in the Federal administration, the pressure grew to undergo a reform process with respect to organizational and financing issues as well.
This reform process has been started with a project of the Federal Directorate of Cadastral Surveying establishing new relations between the Federal and Cantonal authorities based on performance contracts. These agreements have to be embedded in a controlling concept which has clearly to define the targets, and which has to monitor the degree of fulfillment of these targets.
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES OF SWISS CADASTRAL SURVEYING
Since 1912, the Swiss Federal Title Registration System (Eidgenössisches Grundbuch) has operated under the provisions of the Civil Law of Switzerland. Within this law, it is stated that title registration itself has to be based on official cadastral surveying.
According to the Swiss federative political system, the execution of cadastral surveying is delegated to the Cantons; the Confederation restricts itself to supervision and subsidization (Figure 1). Most Cantons, for their part, limit themselves to direct supervision and contract the actual work out to private surveying companies. Cadastral surveying therefore is mainly carried out by the private sector.
Figure 1: Organization of cadastral surveying in Switzerland (Steudler, 1994).
TECHNICAL REFORM
The inconveniences of the old analogue form of cadastral surveying with paper plans were reviewed by a reform project between the early 1980s and 1992. This reform project was finalized by setting new standards for the digital format of Cadastral Surveying. The standards have been defined within two new ordinances that were put in force in 1993.
The new standards include several elements. First, data will be compiled exclusively in digital form. Second, the content of cadastral surveys has not been altered by the reform, but the the survey data will be structured into layers and objects according to GIS tools. Third, the data catalogue has been defined with the help of the new data description language "Interlis" that will serve at the same time as the data exchange mechanism.
The basic idea behind the technical reform was that cadastral surveying data should henceforth serve not only the purpose of land registration but also that of any other land information systems.
CHANGING CONSTRAINTS
Shortly after the setting in force of the new technical ordinances, the national budgetary problems sharply increased. According to the original planned time horizon of 30 years for finishing the digital format of Cadastral Surveying, some SFr. 50 mio (US$35 million) of Federal subsidies would have been necessary annually. This annual credit was cut in half temporarily by the Federal Parliament, but it was increased again to some SFr. 32 mio (US$ 23 million) annually in 1996 and 1997.
At the same time, the public finances situation on both the Federal and Cantonal levels deteriorated. With this difficult situation, pressure was to more ahead on the re-organization and re-definition of public administration principles and processes in general. For the last few years, there has been a tendency in the Swiss Federal administration to re-shape the control and administration to attain a leaner and more efficient operation using the principles of "New Public Management."
New Public Management
The intention of New Public Management (NPM) is to become more effective in the use of public monies than was the case with the traditional management principles. This is achieved by delegating operational competence to Cantonal administration levels. One essential requirement to this end is that performances have to be defined precisely enough so that they can be controlled and measured afterwards. These new principles require a consistent orientation on the output and this has considerable organizational consequences (Figure 2). Cultural changes within the administration will have to take place, and controlling and monitoring tools will have to be developed.
Figure 2: Comparison of Traditional and New
Public Management (Experten-
kommission, 1996).
Consequences for Cadastral Surveying
In 1996, the Federal Directorate of Cadastral Surveying received a parliamentary mandate to evaluate cadastral surveying with regard to efficiency, costs, and duration. A commission of experts was mandated to develop suggestions for a more client-oriented strategy, and an increase in efficiency and effectiveness of Cadastral Surveying. This commission made the following suggestions (Expertenkommission, 1996):
After the commission delivered its results in the fall of 1996, the Federal Directorate of Cadastral Surveying started a project to put these suggestions into practice. The project was accompanied by representatives of the Federal Department of Finances which underlines that it was very much a part of the streamlining of the general developments in the Federal administration. The goal of the project was to define the new management tools – performance contract and mandate – and to build up a controlling system.
PROJECT PERFORMANCE CONTRACT / MANDATE, AND CONTROLLING SYSTEM
In February 1997 this project was started. In its first phase the controlling cycle for cadastral surveying had to be established which, in the beginning, involved some system theory.
Controlling Cycle
‘Controlling’, in this context, means the steering of processes with a view to defined targets. Each process has to be steered and optimized according to the targets. The processes produce some outcomes which have some influence on the original targets. This whole context results in a basic controlling cycle as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Basic controlling cycle (Stiftung BWI, 1997).
The basic controlling cycle can be described as following: starting from the defined TARGETS, the PROCESSES represent the operational realization. The processes themselves produce OUTCOMES which are measured with benchmark results and compared with the originally defined targets. This comparision serves to make the necessary corrections and adaptions for the re-definition of the targets for the next cycle; it has the function of a REGULATOR.
Benchmarking results are used in the whole controlling cycle. They have to be measurable so that differences with the targets can be not only detected but also quantified. Therefore the following elements are basic for a controlling system:
PROCESSES have to be dealt with on the operational level, and are not part of the controlling cycle itself.
Controlling Cycle for Cadastral Surveying
The above mentioned basic controlling cycle then had to be adapted to Cadastral Surveying. The Federal Directorate of Cadastral Surveying had to establish the targets for Cadastral Surveying, and the Directorate defined the following key principles:
The controlling cycle for cadastral surveying was developed with these key principles. Figure 4 shows the result.
Figure 4: Controlling cycle for Cadastral Surveying.
The Federal Directorate of Cadastral Surveying defines the targets to be reached by the use of digital Cadastral Surveying. The Cantons are the operational organizations which have to carry out cadastral surveying (processes). The Cantons have to deliver the results of the outcomes at regular periods. The Federal Directorate of Cadastral Surveying compares the benchmarking results with the defined targets, and the new targets are negotiated with the Cantons according to these comparisions (regulator).
On the one hand, the benchmarking results are part of the perfomance contracts and mandates, which are negotiated at regular time periods between the Federal and Cantonal levels. On the other hand, the benchmarking results are also the indicators with which the outcomes will be quantified.
With the definition of the single elements of the controlling cycle, a basis has been established on which a controlling tool can be developed to help monitor the degree of fulfillment of the targets.
Optimization of the Finances
The crucial principle of the targets for cadastral surveying was the optimization of the finances according to user demands. This target was translated by the Federal Directorate of Cadastral Surveying in such terms that cadastral surveying should be carried out only in areas where digital data are required as a first priority. This means that acquisition of digital cadastral surveying data should foremost be done according to the resulting economic value. This economic value is defined mainly by the aspects of LIS, i.e., complete data coverage according to priorities, data quality standards, information layers, and costs (Figure 5).
To this end, the technical and legal possibilities created by the new ordinances had to be highlighted again; a partial layerwise data acquisition was possible and had to be applied. This way of thinking contrasts with traditional cadastral surveying where – for a certain, mainly rather small area – the complete information content was acquired at the same time.
Figure 5: Optimization of economic value with regard to user demands.
Transition from the old to the new financing system
In September 1997, a new project phase was started to establish the above described steering and controlling concept and to develop the "performance contracts and mandates." In this new phase, concrete measures for the transition from the old financing system to the new one had to be taken.
The rules in the old system of subsidies were such that the Federal subsidies to the Cantons were paid only at the end of a specific surveying job. The credits although had to be reserved and fixed before the start of the job. The time gap between budget and being paid could be up to six or seven years which led to large portions of unpaid Federal obligations towards the Cantons. This past-oriented financing system made it very difficult to have strategic control and influence on the work being done in the Cantons. With the speed of technical progress today, a time gap of four to six years is too long in which to react to new technical and user requirements.
The new financing system according to NPM will be present-oriented where Federal finances will start to flow at the beginning of a surveying job. This, however, will need intense negotiations between the Federal Directorate of Cadastral Surveying and the Cantonal Surveying Agencies. In these negotations, the future work (in [ha]) and the corresponding financial means have to be defined according to the strategic targets.
The transition period from the old to the new financing system will be a major problem from the credit point of view. Over the next few years, the financial credits on the Federal level would nearly have to be doubled as the "old" unpaid obligations of current projects still have to be paid off. These will be a burden at the beginning of the new system even though some extra credits were accorded from the Federal Parliament.
CONCLUSIONS
New Public Management is having an influence on the Federal administration in general. The effects have started to have an impact on several administration agencies. The Federal Directorate of Cadastral Surveying has taken the opportunity to make an early start to the change process in its domain.
The main difficulty in developing and setting up the new system has been the time constraint, as the change had to happen in a rather short period of time. During a certain transition period, the old financing system still has to remain in operation. The time constraint and the parallel operation of the old system needs human resources that are not to be underestimated. A major factor in setting up the new public management tools, therefore, is the communication with the involved partners who have to support the new system as well.
The expected result of the change process is that the competence between the Federal and Cantonal levels can be better separated, and that the Federal Directorate of Cadastral Surveying can better concentrate on their original task – developing future strategies for Cadastral Surveying. A further expectation is that with a newly set up controlling tool, cadastral surveying will become more transparent and user-oriented.
REFERENCES
Expertenkommission (1996): "Effizienz, Kosten und Termine der Amtlichen Vermessung". Schlussbericht Überprüfung der Amtlichen Vermessung zuhanden des Bundesamtes für Raumplanung, Juli 1996.
Steudler, D. (1994): "The response of Swiss Cadastral Surveyors to the Challenges of GIS/LIS". FIG 1994 Congress Proceedings, Melbourne, Australia, Vol. 7, paper 303.5.
Stiftung BWI (1997): Controlling-Seminar EPA/EFV, Seminar-Unterlagen.
AUTHORS ADDRESSES
| Karin Selhofer Eidg. Vermessungsdirektion Einsteinstrasse 2 CH-3003 Bern SWITZERLAND Tel. +41-31-322-5393 Fax. +41-31-322-7869 |
Daniel Steudler Eidg. Vermessungsdirektion Einsteinstrasse 2 CH-3003 Bern SWITZERLAND Tel. +41-31-322-5386 Fax. +41-31-322-7869 Email Daniel.Steudler@ein2.brp.admin.ch |