Second stage of the federal budget reform

At present, the Federal Ministry of Finance is working on the second stage of the federal budget reform, which was entered into force on 1 of January 2013.

The second stage of the federal budget reform pursues the following objectives:

Intended outcomes and activities of the political and administrative spheres of the government will be integrated into the budget. This type of “performance budgeting” is intended to show the public in a clear and transparent way what results are being achieved through the use of their taxes.

• One major aspect of performance budgeting is the concept of “gender budgeting”, which was introduced to Austria as a part of the BFRG and for which the Austrian federal constitution already forms the basis. The federal government, the federal states and the Austrian municipalities are subject to an obligation, when managing budget funds, to strive towards gender equality between women and men.
• The second stage of the federal budget reform will constitute a ground-breaking extension of the federal government’s budgetary system in that it establishes a new budgetary structure and – in tandem with this – creates performance-oriented control of the budget managing bodies. One area of focus is the further development of the federal government’s budgeting and accounting system. The presentation of a true and fair view of the federal government’s financial position, which has now been adopted as a budgetary principle in the federal constitution, will constitute a shift from traditional single-entry government accounting to a form of accounting oriented more to commercial factors, but without losing sight of the special aspects of federal budget accounting.
• The federal budget reform has incorporated both international empirical input from other nations and domestic empirical input from sources in Austria dealing with new budgetary rules (particularly the new flexibility clause in Austrian budgetary law). This second stage of the federal budget reform is creating a new body of budgetary law for Austria’s federal government that is truly modern and oriented to best practices.