Innovative Approaches to Public Services (InDaLE)

Background and Objective

The facilities and the scope of basic public and private services can be organised in various ways. In the European context, these services’ configuration and governance depend to a significant degree on national welfare state models and past developments, factors which in turn generate current path dependencies.

In the joint project InDaLE we researched innovative approaches to public and private service provision in different European countries and assessed their applicability and transferability to rural areas in Germany.

The research project focused on the following three services:

• Medical care and nursing, a domain which is particularly important for upholding people’s quality of life in rural areas (responsible: Technical University Dresden),
• Fire services and hazard prevention, a domain whose fulfilment through, among others, volunteer firefighters can no longer be taken for granted in regions that are experiencing outward-migration and ageing (responsible: Thünen Institute),
• Post- and after-school education, a domain whose implications for regional development in Germany are underresearched (responsible: Oldenburg University).

We analysed case studies in Austria, Scotland, and Sweden as well as model projects in Germany.

Approach

By adopting a comparative approach, we investigated between five and seven case studies for each researched public services domain – that is a total of 11 cases abroad and 7 in Germany. The common thread linking the cases was their relation to concrete problems of guaranteeing the delivery of public services in rural regions within Germany. They developed and realised respective solutions that could potentially also be adopted in Germany.

At the Thünen Institute of Rural Studies we investigated fire services and hazard prevention with a focus on (volunteer) firefighters in Austria, Scotland, and Germany.

Data and Methods

For every public services domain we carried out a literature analysis aimed at understanding the governance structures of the researched contexts. We selected case studies on the basis of a criteria catalogue and an intensive internet-based desk research.

The in-depth investigation of the case studies was based on 87 semi-structured expert interviews (out of which 26 were conducted with a focus on fire services and hazard prevention).

Our Research Questions

InDaLE pursued three main research questions, each of which included corresponding evaluation approaches:

1. Preparation of good practice projects in other European countries: which success factors can be identified?
2. Comparison with completed model projects which target public services in Germany: what are the enabling conditions for the projects and what hinders their long-term consolidation?
3. Deduction of conclusions: what can be learned from the international practice and model projects for the adaptation of the three researched areas of location-bound public services provision?

Results

For the domain of fire services and hazard prevention, we want to highlight four main insights:

• The long-term functioning of the system on a volunteer basis, as we have known it in the past decades, is anything but self-evident.
• Securing fire services and hazard prevention in the long term requires new forms of cooperation between different sectors, departments and administrative levels.
• The acceptance of novel approaches to solutions can be increased if local fire brigades are enabled to participate in the respective processes.

• A partial shift and redistribution of traditional responsibilities can be observed. This is still taking place largely “under the radar” of political and scientific attention.

Innovative approaches to fire services and hazard prevention:

• relieve volunteers by regional coordination and professional support,
• systematise and broaden fire safety education for children, teenagers and adults,
• enhance the local and societal visibility of voluntary fire brigades.

The InDaLE project as a whole added to the scientific knowledge on the governance and the challenges of basic public and private services in a European comparison. It identified relevant factors enabling the long-term consolidation of innovative approaches, among them:

• addressing local and regional needs and their flexible consideration in practical implementation,
• knowledge and capacity building through the further training of project actors, the exchange of experience and knowledge with others, and the reflection on their own learning processes,
• the implementation of such projects within the framework of new inter-communal, inter-sectoral and/or cross-level cooperation,
• motivated and professionally competent key actors who mediate between levels, sectors, disciplines and their respective logics,
• the relief and equally the appreciation of volunteers,
• the personnel and financial capacity of municipal administrations to take up and support innovative approaches and solutions,
• the support of such innovative projects by local and/or state politics,
• stable or long-term securing of funding.