Abstract
Due to worsening financial and fiscal policy conditions, the public administrations came increasingly under pressure during the last years. Therefore nearly all of them had to initiate austerity programmes. These programmes often include various measurements to optimise public spending. The present article concerns itself with an efficiency-increasing approach, which has a close relation to the Kaizen methodology. The existing activities and processes and the following products and working results of a cantonal administration are systematically analysed by it’s own employees. The primary objective is to free up capacities, which in turn could be utilized for current or arising core tasks. The canton of Schwyz deployed this methodology first in a pilot trial (2015) and then in all of its governmental agencies (2016).The results were positive and the aministration was able to generate a substantial amount of ideas for optimisations of the expenses as well as for process- and product-improvements. Some of the suggestions have already been implemented.