Blog

The world is in a state of climate emergency, a ‘code red’ for humanity. The twin climate and biodiversity crises demand urgent, co-ordinated action to transform existing social-technological systems. Simply accelerating what we are doing now cannot avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. As Secretary-General António Guterres stated in his opening remarks at COP27, we need “a Pact in which developed and emerging economies unite around a common strategy and combine…

Looking back, this last year has once again been very challenging yet ambitious for Nido, the innovation lab for the Belgian public sector. We have racked up a number of successful and exciting achievements. Yet getting there in the face of a tenacious status quo has, all too often, required a Herculean effort from our staff. This made me reflect on how the lab and its staff should best act and react in order to move...

Joshua Polchar, Strategic Foresight Lead at the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation, reflects on the panel on which he spoke at European Forum Alpbach 2022, and offers perspectives on how governments can deal with the crises they’re facing without inadvertently missing the warning signs of new ones.  Looking at current events, it feels like governments are in constant firefighting mode. How can we make sense of what’s going on without losing perspective of the...

Public sector innovation is on the rise, in classrooms and outside. As a researcher, lecturer and ex- practitioner of public sector innovation, I was pleased to deliver an executive course on Innovation and Transformation in Government as part of Brazil`s National School of Public Administration (ENAP) Masters in Public Policy. In this blog, I will reflect my experience on the course design and delivery as well as on how OECD and OPSI tools have helped...

Romania’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) boasts of ambitious goals, including digitalisation of the public administration, adding 90,000 jobs to the economy, investing in modern hospital infrastructure, developing zero-emissions railway infrastructure, making public transport safer and greener, strengthening policy co-ordination and improving human resources capacity in the civil service. This comes at a time when Romania is struggling to improve healthcare outcomes, combat some of the…

Decision-makers and experts frequently express an unmet need for resources to help them better perceive, make sense of, and act upon future changes as they are emerging in the present. But, how do we get started with creating something new that responds to the future as it’s shaping up around us? That process of generating novel initiatives that take the future into account is what we mean by “anticipatory innovation”. To make the journey easier,...

What is government digitalisation and public innovation good for? Rather, who is it good for? In these past few days, I have participated in several powerful events, such as the Tallinn Digital Summit, on the acceleration of digital transformation and innovation in governments. A thought that kept recurring in my mind is that, as the pace of digital transformation accelerates as a structural trend akin of a “game changer,” it is important to remind ourselves...

The OECD Directorate for Public Governance (GOV) is working closely with the Portuguese Centro de Competências de Planeamento, de Políticas e de Prospetiva (PlanAPP) on Strengthening Decision Making and Policy Development in Portugal. The project, which covers four specific modules, supports PlanAPP in becoming a core competency centre in the Portuguese public administration by enhancing its institutional and administrative capacities. PlanAPP, a new unit positioned within the Presidency of…

Transparency – one of the core principles of open government – is globally recognised as a catalyst for good governance and a lever for representation and for strengthening citizens’ trust in public institutions. The right of access to information (ATI) held by public entities, is celebrated through the International Day for Universal Access to Information on 28 September each year, underpins the concept of transparency and has been recognised as a fundamental human right that...