Increased emphasis on public employment and management issues at the OECD

In recent years, the OECD – an international organisation that brings together 36 countries including France – has been particularly active in the field of public administration. Within the OECD's Directorate for Public Governance, a Public Governance Committee (PGC) drafts strategy and coordinates all activities related to budgeting and performance management, public policy development and regulatory reform, strengthening ties between administrations and citizens, human resources management and ethics.

Every two years, this committee publishes "Government at a Glance"¹, a detailed overview based on a set of shared indicators. In addition to updating standard data, each edition picks specific topics related to governance and public administration to focus on.

The Public Employment and Management working group (PEM), which is a subset of the PGC, deals specifically with issues related to public employment trends. indeed, in recent years, HR issues have become increasingly a part of the public governance topics dealt with at the OECD, as evidenced by the increased presence of governments within PEM. Participating governments share their national experiences and the results of reforms, thus contributing to the professionalisation of public officials by defining new skills and management standards.

After dealing with civil servants' commitment and skillsets, both of which gave rise to a specific publication², the working group issued a "Recommendation on Public Service Leadership and Capability", a first for the OECD in terms of organisation of the public service.

The text – which was put out for public consultation in the summer of 2018, and was the subject of a large number of contributions – was adopted by the Board on 17 January 2019 and is now one of the organisation's legal instruments, along with the two previous recommendations on gender equality in public life and on public integrity.

Although these recommendations are not binding, it is expected that the Member States that voted for them will do their utmost to implement them fully.

To this end, the working group is currently implementing an inclusive process for deploying the recommendation, including toolkits and analyses to assist States in the various implementation phases and to ensure follow-up. These are timely issues for the PEM working group, which met in Paris on May 6 and 7, where France was represented by the DGAFP.

The OECD is also working on three other issues:

• Defining a "next generation" strategy for diversity and inclusion. The goal is to analyse the convincing results obtained with regard to academic knowledge in behavioural science to identify obstacles and better direct efforts.

• The changing professions in the public sector in response to the development of digital technology and automation.  This reflection is part of the OECD's major campaign "The Future of Work", and focuses on the impacts of new forms of work, but also on the challenge posed by the need for constant skill-building to cope with ongoing changes in employment and administrations.

• Defining the emerging needs of senior management and executives. France (DGAFP) is part of a small working group (Australia, Canada, Estonia, Finland, France, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands). For France, a section is dedicated to boosting the digital abilities of senior officials. This important report will be published in late 2019.

¹ "Government at a Glance 2017" (next edition at the end of 2019)
² "Engaging public employees for a high-performing Civil Service" and "Skills for a high-performing Civil service"