Public Management and Governance in the OECD

Abstract

The mist was gently lifting from the Piazza San Marco, Venice, in the early morning on Monday, 15 November 2010. Pigeons and tourists were beginning to appear in the eerie quiet and echoes of a city without cars that rests on a lagoon, criss-crossed by canals. In the higher-end hotels near the Piazza, delegations from 37 countries - OECD members, as well as Brazil, South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Estonia, Russia and Ukraine - were finishing breakfast and readying for the day’s Ministerial Meeting of the Public Governance Committee (PGC) of the OECD. There were 26 ministerial-level attendees, four civil society organizations (e.g., Transparency International), and of course representatives from the GOV Secretariat. Gingerly climbing onto bobbing water taxis, they crossed the Grand Canal to the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore for the first such meeting since 2005, a meeting that would determine the direction of OECD work on governance for the next five years. The next day, the PGC (consisting of delegates appointed by member countries) would meet for a day to absorb the Ministerial’s conclusions, and engage in discussion over two country reports. By Tuesday evening almost all the international diplomats and public servants had left, and Venice was returned to its tourists, pigeons, and miniscule local population. But a global public sector reform agenda had been forged.