Delivering reliable, responsive, inclusive, accessible and fair public services is one of the most important functions of government, and plays a key role in building trust (OECD, 2024a). Delivering services effectively requires strategic vision, and clear institutional arrangements and co-ordination across levels of government. Implementing whole-of-government and comprehensive strategies for public services design and delivery is a key principle of the OECD Recommendation on Human-Centred Public Administrative Services (OECD, 2024b).
Countries vary in how they organise the delivery of administrative services, reflecting diverse traditions, institutional set-ups and the roles of different levels of government. Those typically delivered solely by the central/federal government include visas (27 out of 30 OECD countries, 90%), filing income taxes (25 out of 30, 83%), old-age pensions (24 out of 30, 80%), and citizenship applications (23 out of 30, 77%). Birth, marriage and death certificates are more commonly managed at local level (in 11 out of 30 countries, 37%). Other services are more evenly split. For example, 17 out of 29 countries (59%) manage ID cards solely at the central level, while 12 do so at multiple or subnational levels (41%); 18 out of 29 countries (62%) manage health insurance registration solely at the central level, and 20 out of 30 countries (67%) manage passport issuance solely at the central level (Figure 4.12).
Government-wide strategies for public services are comprehensive, co-ordinated plans adopted by the central government detailing how to improve public administrative services. Currently, 14 out of 27 OECD countries for which data is available (52%) have standalone government-wide strategies for service improvement, 9 countries (33%) include them within broader strategies (usually the digital government strategy), and 4 (15%) have yet to establish a service improvement strategy (Figure 4.13). Almost all of the strategies include objectives on delivering more human-centred services (22 out of 23, 96%), and 20 out of 23 (87%) also include implementation timelines. Other common aspects of strategies for public services include alignment with other strategies (19 out of 23, 83%) and process simplification (18 out of 23, 78%). Fewer countries have strategies addressing aspects such as monitoring and evaluation (14 out of 23, 61%), capacity analysis (13 out of 23, 57%), and costs and funding sources (7 out of 23, 30%) (Online Figure J.2.1).
Ensuring the protection of service users' rights is fundamental to delivering human-centred administrative services. The OECD recommendation emphasises safeguarding procedural guarantees and providing effective administrative and judicial review mechanisms. Most surveyed countries have a strong legal basis for protecting users' rights, with 28 out of 30 OECD countries (93%) granting users the right to appeal administrative decisions and access to personal data, and 27 out of 30 (90%) granting users the right to be informed of the rationale behind a decision affecting them, and timely process of service applications ( Online Figure J.2.2).
