Reforming for Performance and Trust: Some Reflections

Abstract

When OECD was taking stock of public-sector reforms in 2005 for its ministerial conference, it summarised six shift s in the practices of its member-countries (OECD 2005) and it put trust on its agenda. Governments became open governments, enhancing public-sector performance, and modernising accountability and control. They also reallocated and restructured tasks and organisations, using market- type-mechanisms (MTM), and they organised and motivated public servants as part of modernising the public-employment function. There was an awareness that trust was a key driver and an objective of public-sector reform policies, even if the causal linkages were not clear and rather indirect (Van de Walle et al. 2005). The economic and financial crisis has pushed Western OECD countries to cutback management and to savings, but has also pushed them towards an awareness that trust in the capacity of governments and its public sector to realise effective policies is a crucial element in a performing society and economy. At the 2010 OECD ministerial conference, a key starting point was that “trust, built on openness, integrity, and transparency, remains an overarching goal to foster an effective and performance-driven public sector, delivering better public services more effi ciently, and promoting open and transparent government” (OECD 2011a; see also OECD 2011b). Building and keeping trust remains even more an objective in a period of crisis, where the public sector needs to be a stronghold in the economy and in society. © 2012, Versita. All rights reserved.