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3.2.2. Ongoing reform trends
The structure of the German federal budget consequently remains on the traditional
format. Within these parameters, and based on past experiences, the Federal Ministry of
Finance, and in particular the readjusted MHR initiative “2.0”, have pursued a more modest
and focused reform agenda over recent years, with targeted revisions of the budget
documentation aimed at enhancing transparency in regard to the broad objectives of
government spending and efficiency in implementation. 
In order to move in this direction, the Federal Ministry of Finance consulted with the
line ministries in 2011-12 to seek their views on what would be helpful to them in
presenting their budgets more clearly, clarifying the logic of their financial allocations and
drawing attention to the anticipated achievements. On the basis of the feedback received,
the intention is to redesign the complex budget document so that it is more readable and
usable by parliamentarians. 
To achieve this, the following steps are envisaged: 
●
The budget documentation will include a foreword for each ministerial budget. The
foreword will outline the context for the major policy fields addressed in the financial
allocations and, in its narrative, will indicate the performance elements that are
anticipated to accompany successful implementation. The foreword will be no more
than a single page in length. 

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●
Within each ministry budget, each subject chapter will be preceded by preliminary
narrative remarks – again no more than one page long – highlighting the main budget
indications and performance elements.
●
The administrative expenditure will be separately identified but shown below the pure
programme expenditure, giving a structure that more readily corresponds with sectoral
and functional areas, and facilitating a budgetary analysis that deals with policy
matters first.
This reform would be classified at the modest end of the spectrum of “presentational
performance budgeting” (see Box 8), and as such falls a long way short of even the
pragmatic “performance-informed” budgeting initiatives that have been introduced in
several OECD countries over recent years. It should be noted however that the reformed
approach was introduced on a pilot basis for three federal ministries in the 2013 budget –
Finance, Economics and Agriculture – and the reformed structure was positively received
by parliamentarians. As a result, since the 2014 budget, the reformed system is being rolled
out to ministries via a step-by-step approach.