The 20-point transformation agenda

To conclude Government for a New Age, we provide a distilled transformation agenda for the governments of the world.

1. Drive future thinking through horizon scanning, scenario planning and foresight analysis to achieve better long-term visioning, planning, policymaking and risk management.
2. Leverage the immense volume and variety of available information and analytical resources through exploiting big data.
3. Articulate a well-defined position to signpost the government’s future direction in the form of a vision and/or long-term policy objectives.
4. Innovate and develop appropriate institutions to optimally deliver the vision and aspirations (e.g. through hybrid institutions that blend public and private governance models).
5. Cascade vision and long-term objectives into impactful strategies, policies and plans.
6. Orchestrate an integrated and horizontal policymaking process that reaches across agencies and stakeholders and retains strong links with the ground to enable proper monitoring and response.
7. Harness the emerging fields of behavioural economics and social psychology to find new ways to impact societies’ behaviour through better-crafted policies.
8. Adopt a ‘smart’ approach to regulation through empirical impact analysis of proposals and regular systematic reviews of regulations enabled by centrally driven reform.
9. Create and implement an agile and reliable delivery machinery enabled by accountable governance, networked structures, lean processes and secure infrastructure – particularly in cyberspace.
10. Deliver innovative, personalized and on-demand public services by harnessing cutting-edge technologies and leveraging new delivery models such as partnering, co-venturing, co-design and co-creation.
11. Attract, develop and nurture top-tier talent and rethink ways to reward and motivate them through targeted development, retention and career development planning.
12. Build a generation of entrepreneurial public servants with competencies for the new age (e.g. data science, innovation, scenario planning, cyber security) and leverage their expertise across government agencies.
13. Proactively engage with digitally savvy citizens and demanding businesses to seek input, feedback, and anticipate and address needs.
14. Partner with the third sector to provide more efficient public services and social solutions that better meet the needs of local communities.
15. Champion and catalyse environment sustainability, equality and inclusion through relevant policies and regulations, and by pioneering model initiatives, experimenting with innovations and building relevant capabilities.
16. Empower smart and sustainable cities as engines of growth and development through accountable and effective city governance that creates and monitors new sustainable ecosystems.
17. Build, sustain and improve the national capacity to prepare for, protect against, respond to and recover from emergencies through an integrated, centrally driven, all-hazards approach to risk management.
18. Foster national resilience by strengthening preparedness capacity at all levels, safeguarding critical infrastructure, ensuring continuity of vital services, and partnering with communities and businesses to support in-crisis response efforts.
19. Measure the wider definition of national well-being to provide actionable insight supplementing existing economic, social and environmental measures.
20. Redefine the role and impact of government in societal progress.