Skip to content
An official website of the OECD. Find out more
Created by the Public Governance Directorate

This website was created by the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI), part of the OECD Public Governance Directorate (GOV).

How to validate authenticity

Validation that this is an official OECD website can be found on the Innovative Government page of the corporate OECD website.

Surveys give people an opportunity to be heard and provide government with vital information about the impact of its services. BETA partnered with Department of Social Services (DSS) to encourage more people to complete the Data Exchange survey. Data Exchange is new report platform developed by DSS to enable the collection of meaningful data about service delivery outcomes from organisations receiving community grants. As part of this platform, a client survey enables clients to self-report on…
Chilean mortgage loan market is characterized by debtors' limited understanding of financial information an low level of loans' renegotiation. As a result, there is a high risk that consumers are missing benefits from economic opportunities. That's why Chilean financial institutions must, by law, send to their customers every three months, a Mortgage Statement designed by the regulator. This policy paper is an executive summary of a study that shows qualitative and quantitative evidence about…
BETA partnered with AFSA on two projects to determine how to best communicate about the consequences of bankruptcy. In the first project, over 6,500 Australians completed one of six educational tools online that explain the consequences of bankruptcy and then assessed their levels of understanding. A pop-quiz and video were most effective, improving people’s understanding by 27 percentage points above the group that saw no educational tool. In the second project, we introduced five additional…
Chilean regulation establishes the format and content that financial providers must communicate to cardholders about their transactions throughout a monthly billing statement. Although this information is relevant for making decisions, comparative evidence indicates that people have difficulty understanding and making informed decisions. This study shows qualitative and experimental evidence about the impact of Credit Cards Statements on consumers' repaying decisions. The study considers the…
This study examined how people respond to a new income plan for retirement, known as a Comprehensive Income Product for Retirement (CIPR). A CIPR is a composite retirement income product which is intended to provide a balance of income, risk management (for example, longevity risk management) and flexibility to retirees. In response to a Financial System Inquiry1 recommendation, the Government has agreed to facilitate superannuation trustees pre-selecting a CIPR for their members at retirement.…
In Germany there are significant gaps in measles vaccination which lead to repeated outbreaks of the disease. Vaccinations do more than just protect the recipient against infection. They also protect people who cannot be vaccinated, for example infants or people with certain chronic illnesses. However, many adults do not know that they are not completely vaccinated against measles. In order to close this information and vaccination gap, wirksam regieren compared various possible ways to provide…
All employees working in Australia are entitled to a minimum wage and minimum standards of employment. The underpayment of wages and entitlements is a serious social and economic issue which affects workers, businesses and the community. The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) uses audits to keep businesses on track—and we set out to see if these audits could be even more effective. The result was a win-win for workers, businesses and the community. Employees were $900 better off on average, instances…
Despite email alert systems having a large reach, email can be a difficult platform to spread awareness. BETA partnered with the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) to find ways of boosting the impact of an email alert system. We applied behavioural insights to the email design to bolster its effects, and tested these different design aspects using a randomised controlled trial. Subscribers were randomly assigned to receive an alert with one or more of our new design features (or a…
Soiled waste disposal areas in municipal public housing buildings are not only a major nuisance for residents, but also cause high cleaning costs. The aim of the present study was to develop behavioral measures to promote cleanliness and to test them in a field experiment with about 400 waste disposal areas. The present paper compares two System-1 (large posters displaying watching eyes and a natural landscape) and two System-2 (financial information, information on normative behavior and…
To help improve the impact of cyber security advice for individuals and small businesses, BETA partnered with the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) to design and test different formats of advice. We conducted focus groups and two survey experiments (surveys with embedded randomised controlled trials) to understand whether behavioural insights concepts are effective in shifting people’s intentions to enact safer cyber security practices. We surveyed small and medium business (SMB) owners…