Governments around the world are faced with multiple challenges, including technological change, population ageing, and narrowing fiscal space, as well as consecutive crises including the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions. They are also confronting declining public trust and increasing expectations for responsive, reliable, open and accountable governments that can deliver for citizens and businesses. Together, these pressures demand that governments strengthen and modernise their structures to effectively assess, design, co-ordinate and implement policies that meet the needs of citizens and stakeholders in a timely and efficient manner. Meeting these challenges requires transformation in multiple areas of government, including, but not limited to, planning and collaboration across agencies, stakeholder and citizen participation, evidence-informed policies and the use of AI and advanced technologies.
Ukraine faces these challenges in an extreme form. Since Russia's war of aggression in February 2022, the country has endured devastating human losses, massive economic damage, and the forced displacement of millions of its citizens. Yet, in the face of this extraordinary pressure, Ukraine's government and public servants have demonstrated remarkable resilience: maintaining institutional continuity, sustaining essential public services, and continuing to advance an ambitious reform agenda to transform and modernise government. Ukraine's commitment to democratic governance, public administration reform, and European integration has not wavered. The demands of wartime have accelerated the need for a more coherent, capable, and human-centred government, one that can support recovery, involve citizens and stakeholders in public decisions, drive reconstruction, and advance reform progress in line with EU integration and with its growing partnership with the OECD.
This OECD Public Governance Review of Ukraine assesses Ukraine's central public governance system and supports the implementation of its public administration reform agenda as part of the OECD Global Relations and Co-operation Directorate (GRC) Country Programme of Ukraine. As agreed with the Government of Ukraine, the Review addresses key priority and cutting-edge areas of public governance: institutional resilience, planning and co-ordination, information integrity, citizen and stakeholder participation, the future of the civil service, and the use of artificial intelligence in government operations and service delivery. The Review builds upon OECD public governance standards, frameworks and comparative insights from across OECD member countries and beyond as well as ongoing OECD SIGMA (Support for Improvement in Management and Governance) work with Ukraine. Based on this analysis, the Review provides Ukraine with sequenced, actionable recommendations to strengthen the resilience, effectiveness and democratic quality of its public administration, in support of both its immediate recovery needs and its long-term development and goals. The analysis in this Review is based on evidence collected up to March 2026.
This publication is part of the OECD Country Programme of Ukraine.