Risk management in the public administration in Austria

In a dynamic, social, economic or political-administrative environment, activities are associated with uncertainties and dealing with the resulting risks requires responsible control in local authorities. From the point of... [ view full abstract ]

In a dynamic, social, economic or political-administrative environment, activities are associated with uncertainties and dealing with the resulting risks requires responsible control in local authorities. From the point of view of good public governance, risk management today is a central component of a sustainable management tool.
The increasing importance of risk management in public administration in Austria is also clearly illustrated by numerous legal provisions (VRV 2015, directives and regulations, etc.) and standards. A holistic and systematic risk management is scarce in the public sector in Austria.
The research project deals with the topics of holistic risk management for public administration, the identification of an optimal organizational structure as well as the development of an approach for implementing and handling local authorities in Austria. This means that the research content fits perfectly into the panel.
The relevance of this project is demonstrated by the fact that such a project concerning public administration in Austria has not been carried out so far and makes a clearly recognizable contribution to scientific and application-oriented research. The main research questions are:
• How can the current state of risk management in public administration be characterized and what are the challenges in the future?
• Which core risks are very important for the public administration?
• What are the specific requirements for risk management for public administration in Austria?
• How can a risk management model be designed for public administrations?
• What are the special requirements for the organization of risk management?
Starting from a basic elaboration of this topic in the literature, the research on the empirical investigation - standardized written questionnaire by questionnaire - will be produced.
The primary objective of the empirical investigation is to collect the status quo in public administration for risk management and carry out an empirical review of the causal connections for the risk management in the public administration. The selected research approach includes both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Within the scope of this project an Austrian empirical survey was carried out in the public administration. The questionnaire was sent to 2,100 municipalities, the nine federal states and all ministries for the survey. The survey arc is evaluated after the return control by means of different structure-exploring (exploratory) and structure-testing (confirmative) statistical analysis methods.
Currently there is still a need to catch up on the existence of structured risk management in the public administration. It is also shown, that numerous study participants have not a standardized holistic risk assessment. A systematic approach to the recording, assessment and management and monitoring of the top risks is not available in the public administration in Austria. A pragmatic risk management – which is to be integrated into the administration-internal processes and does not constitute an additional separate solution – is one of the essential requirements for risk management for the public administration. An implementation guide for the target group can be derived from these findings.