Building Centre of Government Capabilities to Steer and Deliver Complex Priorities

Executive summary

Governments deliver complex, cross-cutting priorities in a fast-changing environment, with constrained resources, rising citizen expectations and limited public trust in government. OECD findings show that low trust is driven, in part, by citizens’ perception that governments are unable to address long term and complex policy challenges. There is a sense that governments are “stuck” and that a significant transformation is now required. This report contributes to the OECD’s Government Unstuck agenda, which identifies opportunities for governments to improve their ability to deliver reforms that make a difference in citizens’ lives. It examines how centres of government, the bodies that support heads of government and cabinets, can strengthen their capacity to steer, co‑ordinate and sustain delivery across increasingly fragmented and fast-moving policy environments.

This report was prepared under the auspices of the project Enhancing Centre of Government Capacities to Steer Complex Priorities, funded by the European Union. The project supported participating countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Ireland, Poland, and Portugal) in developing stronger institutional capacities at the centre of government to deliver government priorities. This synthesis report draws on the OECD’s analysis of the six countries and the findings from peer-to-peer exchanges during workshops held in each of the six countries.

The report focuses on three areas central to delivery: reorganising the machinery of government, prioritising and planning for delivery, and building the capabilities needed for cross-government policy co‑ordination, development and follow-through. Across these areas, particular attention is paid to the role of the centre in bridging the interface between the political level and the public service in ensuring implementation of policy priorities.

Reorganising government to deliver

Across countries, institutional restructuring remains a common response to cross-cutting priorities, including the creation of new ministries, the transfer of functions and the expansion of central units. The OECD’s findings from countries such as Estonia suggest that such reforms can help align institutional structures with political priorities when supported by clear objectives and co‑ordinated implementation. Where preparation is limited and legislative and administrative processes are unable to adapt in time, restructuring has been associated with operational disruption, unclear mandates and reduced legitimacy within the administration. The findings underline that the contribution of the centre of government lies in advising on options, brokering agreement across agencies, assessing costs and risks when feasible given political and fiscal objectives to restructure, and guiding implementation. They also highlight the value of considering lower-intensity alternatives such as co‑ordination mechanisms or taskforces before initiating more costly structural change.

Prioritising and planning for delivery

The centres of government in participating countries face persistent challenges in translating political initiatives into manageable and coherent priorities. In several cases, large numbers of initiatives have contributed to fragmented planning with limited hierarchy among strategies (national or regional; policy-focused; or short and long-term) and weak links to budget processes. Examples from Bulgaria and Poland show that consolidating political priorities into smaller, clearly owned sets can improve focus and accountability. However, the report also shows how prioritisation alone is insufficient. Success in delivering government priorities depends on embedding emerging priorities in planning frameworks, cabinet processes, budget decisions, and monitoring systems. Across the six countries, the connection between strategy and budget remains limited, with strategic priorities often not systematically linked to resource allocation or tracked through implementation.

Building capabilities for cross-government co‑ordination and policy development

Centres of government have taken on expanded roles in recent years, including strengthening capacities for crisis responses, co-ordinating public sector reform, and overseeing high-profile priorities. While this can strengthen the government’s ability to steer from the centre, it can also create risks of overextension within the centre of government, fragmented structures and limited capacity to manage competing demands. It is therefore all the more important to build capabilities for policy co-ordination and policy development to address these challenges.

Effective implementation of cross-cutting priorities depends on the centre’s ability to convene, broker and support joint policy work. Across the six countries, centres of government act primarily as facilitators, relying on inter-ministerial groups, senior officials’ forums and shared analytical processes to align policy across ministries. A recurring finding is that analytical capability, including data analytics and policy evaluation, remains uneven and is frequently identified as a priority for investment. Findings also point to networks of planning officials and central analytical units playing a complementary role, but their effectiveness depends on integration with routine government processes (such as preparation of cabinet meetings) as well as clear demand from decision makers which needs to be better anticipated.

Most of the six countries have developed central digital platforms or monitoring systems to track the implementation of priorities. The report finds that these systems vary in influence. Where monitoring is integrated into cabinet processes, budget discussions and regular ministerial engagement, the output from the monitoring systems supports decision making and helps identify implementation risks. Where platforms operate as repositories without regular reporting or clear accountability, the impact is limited. Examples from Greece and Poland in the report illustrate efforts to link monitoring with decision-making routines.

Findings from the chapters on each of the six countries show that involving the centre of government in stewarding cross-government priorities is often driven by political incentives or lack of clarity around the role of a lead ministry, but that decisions on duration, scope and exit are less systematically defined. The report highlights the importance of clarifying the conditions under which the centre assumes responsibility, the resources required, and the arrangements for eventual transition back to line ministries.

Each of the six country chapters focuses on a specific challenge and the role of the centre in addressing that challenge: in Estonia the role of the centre in guiding changes to the machinery of government to better align policy priorities with ways of delivering them; in Portugal the role of the centre in ensuring an effective political-technical interface in managing and delivering priorities; in Poland the role of the centre in steering the design and management of the significant number of priorities; in Bulgaria the role of the centre in ensuring long-term policy goals are taken into account; in Greece the role of the centre in facilitating better monitoring and assessment of key reforms; and in Ireland ensuring the centre is not overburdened by co‑ordination responsibilities while being effective in delivering on cross-government priorities.

Across different institutional contexts, the chapters identify a set of factors that shape whether cross-cutting priorities translate into delivery. The chapters end with options for exploration in each country context. An annex to this report, available under the “Support materials” tab on the report’s main page (hereafter, the “online Annex”), contains toolboxes developed during peer-to-peer exchanges between the six countries, peers from other OECD countries, and the OECD Secretariat’s analysis of the contributions. The online Annex provides examples of how the centre can help to steer the reorganisation of government, prioritise and embed initiatives within governmental routines, and develop analytical and co‑ordination capabilities. The material suggests that effective centres of government combine strategic clarity with disciplined choices about their own role, supported by routines that connect political direction with administrative execution.