By Alexander Seibel and Cornelia Gottbehüt | 29 January 2013

Even Germany, the longtime engine of the European economy, has not proved immune to rising unemployment. Here, Ernst & Young’s Alexander Seibel and Cornelia Gottbehüt set out how innovative use of IT is a key element of the Government’s response

The haunting spector of high unemployment continues to cast its shadow over the global economy. According to the International Labor Organization, the world faces the “urgent challenge” of creating 600 million productive jobs over the next decade in order to generate sustainable growth and maintain social cohesion. Yet many governments are still struggling to find and implement the winning blend of policy and strategy that will enable them to create jobs and growth, transitioning their economies to recovery and a return to prosperity.

But there have been a few notable exceptions. For example, Germany’s rate of unemployment recently fell to 5.4%, its lowest number in 20 years. According to Eurostat, Germany had one of the lowest unemployment rates in not only the Eurozone and the EU-27 member countries, but also one of the lowest rates compared against some of the larger European and global economies, in October 2012 (see figure 1).

As well as falling numbers of jobless since 2005 (see figure 2), another dividend has been the reduced cost of unemployment insurance paid out of the federal budget, which according to one estimate was almost €32b in 2011. However, it’s not all good news. The German economy is not immune to the wider global environment, and unemployment levels may yet rise as the country feels the full effects of the Eurozone crisis through weakened exports. With this in mind, the Bundesagentur fur Arbeit (BA), the federal agency has not stood still and is undergoing a transformation enabled by the innovative use of IT.

The BA is the largest service provider in the German labor market. In addition to helping customers find training positions and employment, the BA provides services to safeguard and create jobs, as well as assistance such as unemployment benefits. With more than 115,000 employees at over 600 offices, the BA offers a nationwide network for the delivery of comprehensive, targeted services.

The applicable business processes to carry out the tasks within the respective offices are going to be supported by an innovative use of IT. As business processes have to be constantly adapted and take into account legal requirements and social and economical trends (for example, the Eurozone crisis), IT solutions have to be constantly modified and new applications developed. Moreover, in response to customer demand, BA’s online platform and e-government offerings are being gradually expanded, with plans to integrate options for digital interaction into the agency’s service portfolio.

In the area of unemployment insurance, simply updating the functionality and securing the legal requirements of existing applications requires annual investment in the double-digit millions. To this end, a professional coordination center, Fachliche Koordinierungsstelle (FKS), identifies, analyzes and prioritizes a large number of functional requirements for IT solutions. FKS also aims to create innovative and sustainable solutions that will align all activities with the BA’s strategic goals. In view of the vast number of applications and projects, this calls for a high level of coordination. Numerous ambitious plans and projects have been initiated for the agency’s employees and customers, and Ernst & Young provides a wide variety of support for these measures.

On the basis of the agency’s statutory obligations, FKS has developed a business process map that includes more than 1,600 process models on a total of four levels of aggregation. This process database ensures that employees have access to a comprehensive reference covering all workflows at the BA’s offices. In order to further optimize business processes, they will be deployed in standardized, role-based graphical user interfaces. The processes for the entire work flow, right through to final processing of customers’ requests, are supported by Rollenbasierte Oberfläche (ROBASO), a workflow management system for administering operational tasks. As employees no longer have to be familiar with a large number of applications, they can focus on the most important thing — serving their customers. This increases the quality of the data processed and reduces training effort.

The tasks and data handled in ROBASO are analyzed, yielding information on process quality and duration. This forms the basis for operative control by team leads and managers and is also used to identify potential for optimization. Processes become more efficient as the processes’ soft spots revealed in this way are corrected. In the future, this information will be displayed in the operating data analysis system.

And in addition to these significant improvements for employees, it is also planned to involve customers more closely and enable them to play a more important role in the process. For example, in the future they will be able to manage their appointments, submit requests and call up notifications online. At present, the use of XING (a German-based networking platform) is tested as an additional database for accelerating the process of filling vacant positions. The measures presented above give a clear indication of FKS’ priority aim to serve all user groups efficiently and effectively. This objective is best met by optimized business processes and targeted deployment of matching IT solutions.

Alexander Seibel and Cornelia Gottbehüt are both Partners in Advisory Services with Ernst & Young GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft in Germany.

This article first appeared in the January edition of Ernst & Young's Citizen Today magazine