Local Alliances for Family Initiative (DE0011)

Description: Local alliances bring together policy-makers, businesses and civil society to discuss how work and family commitments can be combined and develop measures to support families. Aim: Expanding family-friendly measures at local level, also by using more digital information formats. Status quo: About 620 local alliances for family offer specific measures for businesses and families to reconcile family and work commitments at local level. Since the federal Local Alliances for Family initiative launched in 2004, these local alliances between municipalities, businesses, employment agencies, care facilities, free initiatives and engaged citizens have been created and have noticeably improved the compatibility of family and work, e.g. through online family guidebooks, holiday care for children and advisory services for businesses. Ambition: Further strengthening public awareness of the issue of combining family and work commitments, providing more professional communication channels for stakeholders and addressees (online community) and expanding cooperation. New or ongoing: ongoing Implemented by: Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ) Organizations involved in implementation: Municipalities, rural districts, schools, associations, businesses, charities, support and advisory services, independent child and youth welfare agencies, employers’ associations, employment agencies/centres and chambers; “Success Factor Family” network Organizational unit and contact: Division 205, 205@bmfsfj.bund.de Open government values addressed: Participation Relevance: Locally bringing together all relevant stakeholders across sectors to pool resources and to help families reconcile family and work through public information processes.

11. Local Alliances for Family Initiative

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

“Local alliances bring together policy-makers, businesses and civil society to discuss how work and family commitments can be combined and develop measures to support families.

“Aim: Expanding family-friendly measures at local level, also by using more digital information formats.”

Milestone:

11.1 Further connecting local alliances with local businesses in cooperation with the Success Factor Family network through a series of forums on reconciling family and work. Six events planned across Germany. One event took place in May 2017, three events are planned for autumn 2017, two are still pending.

Start Date: N/A

End Date: March 2018

Context and Objectives

The following constitutes the commitment background, according to the action plan:

“About 620 local alliances for family offer specific measures for businesses and families to reconcile family and work commitments at [the] local level. Since the federal Local Alliances for Family initiative launched in 2004, these local alliances between municipalities, businesses, employment agencies, care facilities, free initiatives and engaged citizens have been created and have noticeably improved the compatibility of family and work, e.g. through online family guidebooks, holiday care for children and advisory services for businesses.” [44]

The commitment focuses on “[f]urther strengthening public awareness of the issue of combining family and work commitments, providing more professional communication channels for stakeholders and addressees (online community) and expanding cooperation.” [45]

The proposed milestone seeks to further expand the Success Factor family network. A collective action initiative, the network convenes businesses and civil society in local alliances to help companies adopt more family friendly policies. The milestone is verifiable, particularly in the number of planned events to take place. However, it lacks specific quality or performance criteria for more effective assessment and monitoring.

The commitment provides more awareness and more visibility for existing services—important and laudable outcomes. However, it is difficult to see how this commitment engages processes of government. The commitment does not outline how it helps open up government in the context of transparency, accountability, and civic participation, as espoused by OGP. A deeper, post-implementation assessment of the related outcomes could possibly find some linkages—for example, instances of collective advocacy that informed specific policy designs in this area. But given the ambition and activities outlined, such impacts would be a by-product and not an intended objective. As a result, the commitment is assessed as having no impact on opening government.

Next steps

The IRM researcher suggests considering the following two options:

discontinue the commitment in the next action plan, as it is not sufficiently linked to ambitions for opening up government; or

fully rework the commitment to make linkages to opening government in this area explicit in ambition, objectives, and actions—for example, by establishing an information and advisory service on legal entitlements in this area and including key performance indicators on its impact.

In either case, it might be worthwhile to assess whether this pool of more than 600 local-level multi-stakeholder alliances has created interfaces and linkages to formal policy-making processes. This exercise may offer interesting insights and inspiration for the ambitions expressed elsewhere (e.g., in Commitment 8) to strengthen the integration of formal and informal participation processes. And in a broader context, the assessment might yield interesting findings regarding the formulation of a pragmatic approach and practical, enabling environment for co-creation.

[44] Federal Government of Germany, First National Action Plan 2017–2019, 24, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/germany-action-plan-2019-2021/.

[45] Ibid.

11. Local Alliances for Family Initiative

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

“Local alliances bring together policy-makers, businesses and civil society to discuss how work and family commitments can be combined and develop measures to support families.

“Aim: Expanding family-friendly measures at local level, also by using more digital information formats.”

Milestone:

11.1 Further connecting local alliances with local businesses in cooperation with the Success Factor Family network through a series of forums on reconciling family and work. Six events planned across Germany. One event took place in May 2017, three events are planned for autumn 2017, two are still pending.

Start Date: N/A

End Date: March 2018

The commitment aimed to further strengthen and expand local alliances between business and civil society to raise awareness and explore collective arrangements for better reconciling work and family commitments. The commitment was completed as written and the feedback from participants – a broad array of local associations, charities, schools, businesses etc. – was positive. [77] While the commitment’s only milestone called for holding six events, a more extensive set of events took place, though many were also part of a wider program beyond the framework of the commitment. [78] However, the implementation did not lead to any further changes in government practice [79] in line with the assessment in the IRM Design Report that the overall relevance to OGP values was unclear.

[77] Reply by responsible government department to email questionnaire, received via point of contact to OGP on 17 December 2019.

[78] Government Implementation report A detailed list of relative events is maintained at https://lokale-buendnisse-fuer-familie.de/aktuelles.html.

[79] Email questionnaire.