The governance of inclusive growth: an overview of country initiative.

Abstract

How can we better listen to citizens and businesses to improve public policies and services for inclusive growth? How can we develop policies for inclusive growth across the whole of government and choose the best policy instruments? How do we improve the delivery of services for and with citizens? How do we know when inclusive growth policies actually work? To discuss these and other core issues of public governance, Ministers and senior officials from 50 member countries, non-members and civil society organisations representing the regulatory and public governance communities met in Helsinki, Finland on 28 October 2015. The general theme of the meeting was “Public governance for inclusive growth”. The meeting was held at the invitation of the Finnish Government, chaired by Minister Anu Vehviläinen (Finland), with Minister Helge Braun (Germany), Minister Shimpei Matsushita (Japan) and Deputy Cabinet Secretary Gaurab Bansal (United States) as vice-chairs. In sessions on the topics of Voice, Design, Delivery and Accountability, delegates discussed how to pursue inclusive growth at all stages of the policy cycle. For a full presentation of the conclusions of the meeting, see www.oecd.org/governance/ministerial/. This publication presents an overview of inclusive growth initiatives in 39 countries, collected for the Ministerial meeting and since updated to reflect the situation as of the first quarter 2016. The goal was to highlight the main policy initiatives along the four areas of specific Ministerial discussions on Voice, Design, Delivery and Accountability. Governments are using various approaches, such as administrative simplification and the use of new technologies, to engage with citizens and other stakeholders to improve policy and service design and delivery. Governments are also experimenting with innovative methods of policy design and delivery such as prototyping and co-delivery, and are bolstering the use of data and evidence to strengthen public accountability for results. To complement the qualitative aspects of the reform initiatives, each country profile contains a page of key inclusive growth indicators, taken from OECD Government at a Glance 2015 and OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook 2015. An explanation of the methodological considerations for each variable can be found in Annex B. The template used for collecting the country profile information is presented in Annex A for reference. This publication provides an up-to-date general overview of policy initiatives across a wide range of OECD members and non-members, as a complement to publications such as Government at a Glance.