A method for controlling technical processes, particularly in motor vehicles, in which a microcomputer of a control device processes a complex control program. The complex control program is divided into a number of tasks (A, B, C) which can interrupt each other depending on their priority. To guarantee data consistency within a task (B), it is proposed to provide a local copy (msgx(B)) for global variables (x) which several tasks (A, B, C) can access, in addition to a global copy (msgx). The corresponding task (B) accesses the entry in the global copy (msgx) once during its processing, and updates its local copy (msgx(B)) of the variables (x). Subsequently, this task (B) works with the local copy (msgx(B)).