The COVID-19 pandemic has called on governments to address complex and uncertain issues in a volatile context, with coherent, strategic and forward-looking manner. The OECD supports Members in driving the twin green and digital transitions, while ensuring social cohesion, social mobility and equality of opportunity to optimise the strength and quality of the recovery. This will require strong government capability and policy coherence driven from the Centre of Government in the domestic context, as well as in cross-border co-operation.
Public policymaking
The OECD helps governments tackle post-COVID challenges, prioritising strategic governance for green transitions, social cohesion, and equality. Reinforcing global commitments through capable governments is crucial. For effective governance and international cooperation, maintaining an impartial public service is vital. Governments, pressured to demonstrate outcomes and implement well-being-improving policies, need evidence-informed decision-making. Despite available evidence through public policy evaluation, its utilisation often remains challenging for governments.
Key messages
Responding to global commitments, including those encapsulated by the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goals to keep the UN2030 Agenda on track will also require strengthening government capability and policy coherence. Coherence is critical to ensure mutually reinforcing policies at different levels of government to address global challenges.
Governments are under increased pressure to show that their use of public resources and the decisions they make translate into desired outcomes, and to implement policies that actually improve the well-being of people. Tackling these challenges requires decision-making informed by robust and credible evidence. By bringing an objective understanding of what works, why, for whom, and under what circumstances, public policy evaluation provides such crucial evidence to decision-makers and citizens. Yet, use of evaluation results often remains fundamentally difficult for governments.
Context
OECD Framework for Evaluating COVID-19 Responses
This OECD framework identifies three main types of policy responses that governments need to evaluate to better understand what has
worked well and what has not in managing the pandemic. These three main policy responses correspond to the major phases of the risk management cycle: pandemic preparedness, crisis management, and response and recovery.
Challenges centres of government face in co-ordination and policy development
Centres of government (CoGs) contribute to democratic resilience is by promoting whole-of-government policy responses that overcome traditional administrative barriers. The emergence of cross-cutting policy challenges such as climate change, rising social inequality and migration can no longer be addressed in silos and, as such, have proved challenging for governments. supporting good public governance through co-ordination and policy development support touches a wide range of challenging areas for the CoG, including in particular operationalising long-term policy issues and prioritisation and trade-offs. By breaking down silos, fostering collaboration and ensuring coherent government actions, CoGs help governments reduce the risk of fragmented actions, duplication and low quality of services, and difficulty in meeting government goals and international commitments.
-
Centres of government are the support structure serving the highest level of the executive branch of government (presidents, prime ministers and their equivalents). The centre of government helps the head of government and ministers make good decisions by ensuring they receive evidence-informed, co-ordinated and coherent advice. They also co-ordinate the various players in the policy process, and to help ensure the quality and capability of the policy system.Learn more
-
Governments have responsibility for managing a range of complex crises. Such crises include pandemic, climate risk, other natural hazard, cyber or terrorist attacks. The COVID-19 crisis illustrates the transboundary nature of such critical risks. Effective crisis management coordinates with the private and voluntary sectors. The OECD fosters mutual learning amongst governments to collect data and notable practices on strategic crisis management and increasing national resilience in the face of an uncertain future.Learn more
-
For sustainable development to be achieved, governments must enhance their capacity to design, implement, and monitor coherent and integrated policies. This requires identifying trade-offs, reconciling domestic and international objectives, and addressing the spill-overs of domestic policies on other countries and future generations.Learn more
-
The current global context highlights the need for governments it to further modernise their public administrations to increase government capacity and resilience in response to the current set of crises and to global, crosscutting challenges.Learn more
-
Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) help ensure that decisions are rooted in trustworthy evidence and deliver desired outcomes. They are also a critical element of good governance, as they promote public accountability, transparency, and contribute to citizens’ trust in government. Nevertheless, governments face significant challenges to develop robust and reliable M&E systems and practices, as well as to ensure that the results and evidence of M&E are used to support decision-making processes, including budgetary decisions.Learn more