How to reduce administrative burdens?

The Standard Cost Model method!

Admnistrative burdens are daily obstacles in the life of our enterprises. In order to fulfil obligations from public authorities, enterprises have to allocate resources to administrative activities rather than investing them in more productive activities. This is not only a costly affair for the business community in each country, it also inhibits economic growth and prosperity in society. That's why these administrative burdens need to be reduced. The Standard Cost Model is the way to achieve this!

The Standard Cost Model (SCM) is today the most widely applied methodology for measuring administrative costs. The SCM has been developed to provide a simplified, consistent method for estimating the administrative costs imposed on business by central government. It takes a pragmatic approach to measurement and provides estimates that are consistent across policy areas.

The SCM methodology is an activity-based measurement of the businesses’ administrative burdens that makes it possible to follow up on the development of the administrative burdens. At the same time the results from the Standard Cost Model measurements are directly applicable in connection with the governments’ rule simplification efforts, in that the results shows which specific regulations and in details which part of a rule that are especially burdensome for businesses. 

A key strength of the Standard Cost Model is that it is uses a high degree of detail in the measurement of the administrative costs, in particular going down to the level of individual activities.

The process of reducing the administrative costs with the SCM method can be divided in three steps:

1. Break down regulation into manageable components that can be measured 
2. Measuring the administrative burdens
3. Simplifying the regulation