Decision model
NetWORKS' integrated strategy formulation approach
The challenges of long-term strategy formulation
Ensuring comprehensive and high-quality infrastructure is undisputedly a chief municipal responsibility. The basic conditions to fulfil this task, however, have changed. Financial straits increasingly limit cities' scope for action. At the same time the European Commission's competition policies act as a disruptive factor, as they conflict with the right to self-government granted to municipalities under constitutional law. Moreover, provision of economically and ecologically efficient water services has been a legally stipulated requirement since the adoption of the EU Water Framework Directive (EU-WRRL). Demographic change poses a further technical-economic challenge which will lead, or has already led to, considerable population decline in some places and which requires the adaptation of existing supply and waste management structures. In the face of such transformation processes, municipal political and administrative decision-makers must ask themselves how adequate and suitable supply and waste management can be secured in the future. What strategies will best safeguard supply and waste management in the future? In the long term is it wise for municipalities to privatize their water provision? What opportunities do alternative forms of regional cooperation offer? Would it not be better to continue using municipal companies to perform these so-called basic services? Finally: how do the possible alternatives measure up from a sustainable infrastructure management perspective?
Decision-making aids for municipalities
The research association netWORKS has developed an integrated strategy formulation approach to support municipal decision-making. It aims in particular at assisting municipal politicians, departmental heads and chief officials in reaching decisions and at enabling them to detect and assess necessary action ensuing from particular decisions at an early stage. It comprises a sequence of four structuring steps:
- status report and problem analysis,
- formulation of practical strategies and their possible implementation,
- interdepartmental impact appraisal,
- evaluation of selected strategies on the basis of so-called guiding principles with the aim of identifying where adaptation is required in order to further develop and optimize the strategy.
Of course, real political decision-making processes do not allow for such schematically clear differentiation of steps. Moreover, political decision-making processes in practice are not based solely on objectively rational criteria but function to an equal degree according to the logics of micro- and power politics. Nevertheless, a certain structure can be formed on the basis of the proposed decision-making process.
The netWORKS approach
The decision-making process should employ NetWORKS’ integrated strategy formulation approach and be applied in various phases and with a hierarchical implementation procedure. This process can be characterized here as the sum of required steps, starting with identification of the problem situation and culminating in the decision. Proceeding in this manner makes it possible to predict the possible consequences of certain decisions. In this context the third step, the interdisciplinary and interdepartmental impact appraisal, assumes a particularly important role. The main goal here is to anticipate the possible effects of particular decisions. This entails examining opportunities, restrictions and unintended negative consequences which may have been caused by specific decisions. This information is subsequently evaluated in four steps. The outcome of this assessment may reveal deficits and problems which suggest a need to modify the selected strategy. It may prove wise and even necessary to perform the procedure repeatedly to arrive at the best possible decision. In this respect, decision-making is not a process which is performed once only. On the contrary, complex decision-making scenarios and the possible impact of particular decisions make it necessary, in certain circumstances, to act out alternative possibilities.
Figure 1: netWORKS integrated strategy formulation approach*
*Source: netWORKS research association