Topics and Tasks
table of contents
About the Austrian School of Government (ASG)
ASG operates at the intersection of national and international administrations, educational and research institutions, and the public. Our goal is to provide knowledge about the prerequisites for effective administration, supporting sustainable competence development in the public service. We aim to establish cooperation and partnerships to research these prerequisites.
Our focus includes reflecting on offerings in the higher education sector and interlinking administrative science research and scholarship with public sector practices.
Reliable and robust institutions are essential for a functioning state. Administrations are such institutions. They must be future-oriented, adaptive, agile, and sustainably aligned with legally compliant action.
This is the premise behind the establishment of ASG, implemented as a department within the Civil Service Section of the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service, and Sport in spring 2023.
Education System Development in the Civil Service
Due to demographic and technological changes, the public sector and its approximately 140,000 employees face major challenges. We must ask today what skills tomorrow’s public servants will need and design appropriate training and development pathways for all decision-making levels.
To assess future developments and requirements and establish new educational paths, ASG collaborates with the "Advisory Board for the Administration of the 21st Century," a network of federal academies, universities, universities of applied sciences, and national and international institutions.
Higher Education Sector
The heterogeneity of administrative studies—which encompasses sociological, technical, and cultural aspects alongside legal discourses—requires inter- and transdisciplinary approaches. These approaches are internationally recognized as state of the art and have been incorporated into academic teaching.
The ASG aims to utilize the existing potential in Austria's research landscape and foster its expansion. To this end, ASG seeks cooperation with the Austrian higher education sector to establish administrative studies as part of interdisciplinary fields of study. Where necessary, ASG also works interdisciplinarily and transdisciplinarily.
New Approaches to Administrative Studies
The Austrian School of Government conducts research independently and in coordination with its scientific advisory board, academic networks, and scientific projects.
A foundational principle is that legal and economic research approaches must be complemented by insights from sociology, history, media, and cultural studies to adequately reflect and optimize the complexities of social organizations and processes, such as those of federal administration.
Administrative decisions are inherently tied to the social organization in which they are made and the media networks that process them. A monodisciplinary approach would fail to capture this complexity.
Research activities aim to ensure that new and in-depth knowledge is:
- available to the public service
- incorporated into training and curricula
- accessible to decision-makers
- balanced to avoid undue reliance on either traditional approaches or unsubstantiated innovation trends
One academic publication organ of the ASG is the scientific book series AdminiStudies, published by Metzler. This peer-reviewed series disseminates research results and is curated in collaboration with renowned academics through conferences and workshops.