1.
WHOLE-OF-GOVERNMENT
STRATEGY STEERING:
TOWARDS A BLUEPRINT
FOR REFORM
Stephane Jacobzone
OECD Project Team
Public Governance and Territorial Development
27 February 2015, Tallinn, Estonia

2.
CURRENT CHALLENGES
Too many horizontal strategies
Lack of systemic joined-up solutions
Despite efforts to bolster Center of Government Steering
capacity since the 2011 review
Still informal arrangements Mof/GO may not be enough
to guide strategy development
Co-ordination of Government Programme with budget
allocation process remains a challenge
Lack of a common vision
Cross-government flexibility in allocating resources
remains limited
Some progress in fostering a collegial approach for
managing the senior civil service

3.
Whole-of-government strategy-
setting and steering
 Too many priorities (even if not as many as in
Finland!); not strategic enough
 Need to forge long term strategic outcomes through
foresight, charting a way forward for the country
 Co-ordination challenges
• Stove-pipes in the management of government machinery
• How to create greater cabinet collegiality without
necessarily resulting in greater centralisation?

4.
Evidence-based Decision-making
Challenges in generating evidence and
operationalising it for decision-making
Progress with using Green and White papers
and strengthening the institutional set up for
RIA
Using regulatory impact and value-for-money
analysis systematically
Setting up foresight capacity at the centre of
government to inform long-term planning
Develop capacity to integrate evidence in
decision making

5.
Towards a blueprint for reform
1. One government – One strategy
2. Bust silos to increase capacity for policy
integration
3. Set a clear path to move forward on reform
4. Just Do It (“Follow through”)
5. Build a strong knowledge infrastructure based
on shared values

6.
MORE VISION !
 Improve degree of visioning in Government’ strategic
documents
 Cluster priorities around high-level, multi-year, integrated
objectives linked to a broad vision-based strategic framework
 Align ministry objectives with government’s strategic objectives
 Frame medium-term objectives within long-term planning
horizon
 Re-create capacity for strategic foresight to build a forward
looking vision
 Independent check of coalition agreements
 (e.g. NL’s Central Plan Bureau )

7.
One Government – One Strategy
Enhance capacity for whole-of-cabinet policy making
 Facilitate whole-of-cabinet approach
 Combining vertical and horizontal coordination, helping to translate
coalition agreements into government strategy
 Increase capacity to work as a « single government »
 Ensure translation process leads to Strategy consistent with fiscal
framework
 Institutionalise government-wide co-ordination
 Mandate existing Cabinet committees to oversee strategy-setting and
implementation
 Provide funding for horizontal priorities (Policy Reserves)
 Create mirror committees of civil servants to provide support
 Draw on home-grown areas of excellence, EU Affairs co-ordination

8.
Incentives to enhance co-ordination:
New Zealand (2013)
• Multi-category funding appropriations
• Financial incentives remove barriers to co-
ordination:
– provision for multi-category funding
appropriations that enable a lead ministry with a
multi-sector task to encourage other ministries to
deliver on their part of that task
– “seed funding” drives innovative practice by
ministries; a key purpose being to buy down
transaction costs and reduce administrative
burden in inter-institutional collaboration

9.
Link Budgeting and Strategy-setting
 Mobilise budgeting to support co-ordinated
strategy-setting and implementation
 Link budgeting and strategy to ensure that results can be
achieved (MOF/GO)
 Leverage move towards performance budgeting introducing
partial « programme-based budgeting »
 Improve fiscal/spending performance information to inform
strategy setting
 Enhance MoF/line-ministry co-ordination

10.
Further enhance collaboration across the
senior civil service
Continue building collegial management of the
community of senior civil servants
Government Office Top Civil Service Excellence Centre
Unified competency framework
common values and ethics; serving one government
Consider assessing annual performance of senior
civil servants against the achievement of ministry
and government objectives, in addition to
assessment against job competencies (e.g.:
Canada’s MAF)

11.
Strengthen institutional set up for
Regulatory Impact Assessment
Strengthen oversight of RIAs either through MoJ
unit or external advisory body
Make RIA findings public as part of Cabinet
decision-making
Build RIA oversight capacity
(in line-ministries; in CoG/MoJ)
Minimise the use of exceptions
Create traffic-light system to ensure that Cabinet
submissions include robust RIA information
Ensure RIAs cover impact on SMEs (e.g. SWE; CH)

12.
Develop capacity for Foresight
Integrate foresight and horizon scanning into
government decision making processes
Leverage the example of Finland
Leverage foresight to help create a strategy
and vision for economic development

13.
Develop capacity for applying and
integrating evidence
 Leveraging existing population and business registries as
well as the existence of a strong interoperable
infrastructure (X Road)
 Mapping where data and capacity for analysis exist and
facilitate a network approach to the generation and use of
knowledge
 Leverage the use of Open Data

14.
Structural and Resource Flexibility
Siloed institutional arrangements are
hindering integrated policy coherence
Input-based budgeting system
75 % of the Budget fixed in entitlements
Government-wide budget and human-
resource flexibility remains limited
Gaps remain in pursuing whole of
government human resource management
standards

15.
Create contingency funds and policy
reserves
For multi-sector strategies and programmes:
allocate dedicated contingency funding (e.g.
Estonia’s premature death strategy)
For unforeseen/unanticipated needs:
Access to these funds to be
debated/approved by Cabinet

16.
Create Fiscal Space:
Use Spending /Strategic Reviews
Launch pilot projects for strategic spending
reviews, in both entitlement-programming
and discretionary-programmes
Mandate existing Cabinet committee
overseeing major spending to monitor
spending reviews and identify potential
savings to support emerging priorities

17.
Enhance flexibility in resource
allocation
 Mobilise strategic or spending reviews to
identify savings to support high priority
strategic initiatives
Adopt mid-year spending/budget reviews to:
Update parliament and citizens on state of National
Economy and the State Budget
Identify potential areas where spending is not
achieving programming targets
Identify financial resources for potential re-
allocation
Under the responsibility of Cabinet

18.
Break down barriers to institutional
flexibility
Good practice of inter-ministry task forces
Facilitate capacity for government to
change/redefine its own configuration
Compile a list of key institutional,
regulatory, legal and/or constitutional
impediments to greater inter-institutional
flexibility
(Cf parliamentary committee in Finland)

19.
Implement Whole-of-government
HRM standards
Broaden and deepen existing initiatives to
apply common HRM standards for hiring,
remuneration, performance-evaluation,
promotion, training, rewards and
recognition, firing, etc.
Manage career progression from a whole-
of-government perspective
Encourage inter-ministry mobility
Manage workforce as if a common market

20.
ENHANCE THE CAPACITY TO GOVERN:
ONE GOVERNMENT, ONE STRATEGY
 Enhancing inter-institutional co-ordination,
 Promoting Collective Commitment
 Improving Resource-allocation flexibility
can lead to:
An integrated whole-of-government approach to
address today’s complex, cross-cutting challenges
Enhanced capacity to pursue strategic outcomes;
A more focussed government-wide mission based on a
shared understanding of the strategic challenges

21.
TOWARDS A BETTER AND
MORE AGILE GOVERNMENT!
THE FIN-EST APPROACH TO GOVERNMENT
THANK YOU!