What gets lost along the way?
Chances and pitfalls of government led implementation procedures for GRB
The case of Austria
Dr. Elisabeth Klatzer
European Gender Budgeting Network elisabeth.klatzer@gmx.net
WiSE Conference
Counting on Women: Gender, Care and Economics
Glasgow, May 24-26

„GRB as a long-term change process“
Implementation of Gender Budgeting in
Austria: is it on the right track?

 Framework for analysing change in public administration
 Account of Gender Budgeting implementation in Austria
 Analysis using the theoretical framework
 Some conclusions

 Conventional framework of public management literature
 Michael Butler: concept of receptivity
 Attempt to reveal factors contributing to organizations being
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Low-change contexts
Non-change contexts or
High-change receptive contexts

How open/receptive are organisations to change and how they cope with it?
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Organizational level
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Ideological vision
Leading change
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Institutional politics
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Implementation capacity
Possibility space (emergent processes)

Source:
Michael Butler

Initial impulse from civil society
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Publications, Expertise, Lobbying
Pilot projects
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Federal level (e.g. income taxation, research funding programs)
First attempts of systematic integration
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Government decision to develop pilots in all
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 ministries
Chapter „Gender aspects of the budget“ in budget materials
Interministerial steering group
Training activities
Development of manuals, trainings
Unique Window of Opportunity: Reform of budgetary laws

Austria: Examples of pilot analysis
Gender controlling of public administration
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Monitoring of highest ranking positions in public administration
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Analysing share of men and women
Setting targets to improve representation of women
Carried out annually
Analysis of income taxation
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Impact of tax structure and rates
Impact of tax brakes (exemptions)

Analysis of pension benefits
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Elaboration of disaggregated statistics
Labor market policies for people with special needs
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Who is elegible? => enlarging the target group
Participation in training programmes
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Beneficiary analysis of funding

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P h a
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P h a s e
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Main elements of the reform:
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Medium term planning
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Medium term expenditure framework
Strategic planning
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Strategy report
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 New budget structure
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Global budgeting instead of line item budgeting
Results-oriented management
Performance Budgeting
Accrual accounting and budgeting

After piloting phase, strong legal anchoring
Constitutional provision:
 National, regional and local levels of government have to strive for the effective achievement of equality between women and men in their budgetary policies.
Budgetary reform process at federal level:
 Gender Budgeting as integral part of performance oriented budgeting

Key features of integrating GRB (1)
 Providing a firm legal basis
Entry points:
 Strategic policy documents
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Objectives, Indicators
Performance reporting
Impact assessment of legislative projects
Controlling, Monitoring, Auditing
Intended impacts are at the center of attention:
 Results and impacts, especially taking into account gender equality impacts

Putting into practice: Defining gender equality performance objectives (1)
 Each ministry has to define at least 1 gender equality performance objective
(out of 5 performance objectives)
 Big cultural change for administration
 Currently pilot phase
 Full implementation in 2013

Putting into practice: Defining gender equality performance objectives (2)
Examples
Internal performance objectives:
 equal respresentation of women and men in
 leading positions equal participation in training activities
External performance objectives:
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Equal access to active labour market policies
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(number and quality of training)
Gender equality in educational attainment
Better access of women to research funds
More women in leadership positions at universities

 Receptivtiy
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Organizational level
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Ideological vision
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Leading change
Institutional politics
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Implementation capacity
 Possibility space

 Strategic agenda
 Goals intelligible to all stakeholders?
 Consistency?

 Leadership / change strategists?
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All org. members need to fulfill the role of strategists, implementers and recipients
 Commitment rather than compliance
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Influencing people through values and visions
Persuade people to support a common cause or vision

 Public participation in agenda-setting crucial to obtain legitimacy, support and commitment
 Negotiations between different groups within the organisation
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Reach agreement on necessity of reform
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Obtain and maintain main stakeholders commitment
 Importance of cooperative organizational networks (inside and outside)
 Advocacy coalitions

 Mechanisms used to shape and influence implementation
 Behaviour of other stakeholders in org. network
 Availability of skills and resources
(financial, human, knowledge, time)
 Establishment of learning processes

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Some promising factors
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Change strategists located in Finance Ministry
Gradual implementation to allow adaption
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Some major shortcomings
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Need for change not clear, not established
Clear process, but limited vision
People not persuaded of common cause and vision
Change strategists clearly too few
Weak advocacy coalitions
Learning process not established
Side effects considered?
Regular assessments of reform implementation?
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Rather low-change context