National Heritage Agency
The National Heritage Agency failed to implement the measures planned for attaining its specific goals. Instead of 523 monuments it placed only 176 monuments under protection in 2014. Furthermore, it did not publish the decisive criteria for placing monuments under protection, which resulted in a lack of transparency as regards its activities in this regard.
The Agency lacked significant management instruments. It did not assess whether the use of funds for the activities envisaged only in its statutes was appropriate and whether those activities contributed to the fulfilment of its statutory tasks.
In addition to its staff, the Agency deployed up to 18 persons as contract staff, accounting for some EUR 545,000 (2014), as well as contractors, namely eight full-time equivalents accounting for some EUR 442,000 (2014), which totalled EUR 987,000, equalling 10% of staff expenditure. In making use of contract staff and contractors, the National Heritage Agency circumvented personnel management via posts.
Despite of the provisions laid down in the Federal Act on the Protection of Monuments (Denkmalschutzgesetz) and the General Framework Directives (Allgemeine Rahmenrichtlinien), the Federal Chancellery failed to issue special directives for the granting of subsidies. Therefore, a strategic orientation of those subsidies was lacking. The departments concerned with region-specific matters lacked an overview of the open accounts, which accounted for some EUR 11.22 million in end-2014.
The monument information system IT project, which was to go live by 2013, was not implemented. In 2010, the expenses for the whole project until 2019 were originally estimated at a maximum of EUR 4.01 million. In 2015, the expenses until 2019 were estimated at EUR 10.06 million.
The National Heritage Agency lacked adequate evaluations on travel costs and a regulation on the use of the 23 service cars. Some logbooks contained incomplete, incorrect and sometimes illegible entries. Due to insufficient monitoring, the incorrect entries were not detected.