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fundamentally deferred from the original intended or required behavior by the BAG
policy. The BAG law fundamentally challenged the monopolist role of the Kadaster as a
key geo data provider. Much more than before, the Kadaster's role in the BAG became a
servicing role toward the Ministry and the municipalities. The expectation was that the
uncertainty arising from these fundamental changes would have an effect on the extent
and type of discretions. During interviews, in particular, strategic Cadastral staff felt
the fundamental changes resulting from the BAG. They were, on their own account,
searching for new avenues of cooperation to sustain their role in the future. They indi-
cated seeing themselves acting in larger cooperative arrangements. Being aware that
the BAG law would fundamentally change their organization vis-à-vis the environ-
ment and changes the autonomy of the Kadaster, the strategic staff members actively
investigated possible scenarios. Such behavior can be interpreted as a form of discretion.
It shows that, in particular, strategic staff members are cognitive of the changes in the
environment. The aspect of “cognitive filter to the environment” was therefore qualified
as high for strategic staff members. As for other types of staff members, such behavior
was absent, and the score for this aspect was qualified as low.
The aspect of “personal task simplification” and “adherence to client interests”
scored low for the Cadastral case. The fact that, toward the end of 2010, municipal
geoICT staff became increasingly satisfied with the standardization process resulting
from BAG, even though it decreased their ability for discretionary decisions, implies in
retrospect that their earlier alignment and operational discretions within municipalities
had been to facilitate and simplify their internal work processes. Thus, there was a shift
in purpose of discretions. Before BAG, the regular activities gave rise to alignment and
staff discretions for the sake of personal task simplification. With BAG standard proce-
dures making the staff's working life easier, they became more willing to accept the new
BAG regulations, thereby implicitly accepting less room for discretionary actions. For
strategic staff members, the BAG rules also decreased their room to maneuver, yet this
did not necessarily lead to more complex or more simplified tasks. All in all, the degree
to which in 2010 discretions still existed with the intention to simplify their personal
tasks can be considered as low.
In sum, the Cadastral case exhibits high scores for “cognitive filter to the envi-
ronment” and “ability to envision courses of alternative actions” for strategic staff
members, implying the presence of discretions among strategic staff members.
For alignment and operational staff members, discretions were present in the past
(before the extensive influence of BAG), but given the limited degree of alignment
and operational influence, it is fair to say that most of these discretions gradually
disappeared and that most alignment and operational staff—in particular those
working within municipalities—concurred with the clarity and certainty of opera-
tional processes provided by BAG coordination. Thus, BAG resulted in a personal
task simplification for those staff members. Finally, the client/external interests are
a motivation to reach to discretions for all staff members.
For all three other cases, the process of deriving values for the discretions indica-
tors was similar. By systematically assembling observations on behavior in relation to
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