Comparative Evaluation of ARGE (Team) vs. Option Model: Two Elements of Integrated Support according to the 4th Law on Modern Services in the Labour Market/ "Hartz IV" (Field 1: Descriptive Analysis and Matching)

§ 44b SGB II determines that the agencies for employment, free cities, and administrative districts as the responsible body for securing peoples’ livelihoods establish consortiums (so called ARGEs) to enable a uniform execution of their tasks. These consortiums administrate the tasks of the agencies of employment as the funding agencies according to SGB II. The local administrations should assign their execution of their incumbent tasks according to SGB II to these consortiums. To fulfill their tasks these consortiums are empowered to execute administrative deeds as well as to issue interference notifications. Such a consortium can be founded as a Ltd, as a business under civil law, or under public law. Regarding the organization of such a consortium only a few aspects are legally binding e.g. the creation of a central meeting point or the appellation of a personal contact for all needy persons.

Additionally, the experimental clause according to § 6c SGB II enables 69 local administrations, among them 63 administrative districts, to compete with these consortiums and so to test alternative paths such as the authorization of local authorities to execute the tasks of the agencies of employment according to SGB II (so called opting local authority).

The evaluation of the experimental clause according to § 6c SGB II pursuits two aims. On one hand the implementation and execution of SGB II by the administrations should be observed and documented. On the other, impacts of the experimental clause have to be considered and analyzed. Furthermore, the underlying coherences of these impacts have to be highlighted.

The project network consists of four fields of investigation that examine which model is more successful in respect to labor market policy. Therefore a comparative evaluation of the models “opting local authority” and “consortium” will be conducted whereas it is assumed that also within these two basic types of execution considerable differences in their organization of their activities exist. Hence, an appropriate evaluation of the § 6c SGB II is only possible if beside the two basic types, the organizational variety within these two basic types is considered. In addition, it has to be considered that in some administrative districts this task execution takes place discretely. The field of Investigation 1 “Descriptive Analysis and Matching” plays a decisive role throughout the project. It is supposed to enable an efficient treatment of the project as well as the use of synergies, especially in regard to the data and their processing since it is an essential foundation for the work of the other fields of investigation.

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