The Heywood Fellowship reviewed España 2050, Spain’s strategic vision. It highlighted expert input, ambition, and key lessons: government backing, explicit trade-offs, cultural change, and the need for broad consensus.

This new paper argues national strategy must be a core state function. Democracies can deliver it through inclusive, adaptive practices, and embedding learning into institutions to align short- and long-term goals.

Bureaucratic responsiveness depends on organisational capacity as well as political alignment. Bureaucracies with slack resources – rather than general capacity – are more likely to adopt political changes, commit to timelines, and implement policies faster. Analysing 1,430 UK legislative requests, the study confirms that slack resources enhance adaptability and expedite policy execution.

The Blavatnik Index of Public Administration report 2024 provides comparative benchmarking data on the activities and performance of civil services around the world.

Decentralised administration of social assistance programs requires significant organisational capacity. In some circumstances, inter-municipal cooperation can enhance local policy implementation but impact evaluations have focused on public services that are capital-intensive, and on the effect of cooperation on service costs rather than quality.

Following a roundtable to explore finding a better balance between efficiency and resilience, this report summarises the discussions and presents ideas to contribute to the policy discussion on shifting towards prevention and resilience.

Drawing on a notable case of collaborative failure in England we show that misdiagnosing public service problems as being of a type likely to be cured by joint working also generates poor results, and belongs conceptually prior to many “go-to” explanations of failure.

High-frequency granular data can enable senior government officials to hold poorly performing members of the service delivery chain to account; however, centralised management must translate large volumes of data into appropriate management actions to be effective. 

A newly published PeopleGov report finds the pandemic imposed a dual imperative on civil services: the need for greater speed, flexibility, and decentralisation of decision-making on the one hand, and for greater coordination and collaboration on the other.

The People in Government Lab’s policy report Addressing challenges to remote and hybrid working in public organisations presents the results of a survey conducted in several public organisations in three countries – Brazil, Chile and the United Kingdom. It provides insights into improving remote and hybrid working inside governments.

The project examining the levelling-up of Britain’s regions seeks to help address the problem of profound spatial inequality in the UK by drawing lessons from international success stories of cities that bounced back from decline.

Although empirical research has consistently confirmed the harmful implications of red tape on public organisations and officials, its impact on employees’ job stress and burnout remains elusive. Our findings expand the understanding of red tape implications in public service, especially in institutional settings different from those traditionally studied.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical role not just of government generally, but in particular the essential role the centre of government must play to mitigate problems that no longer respect organisational boundaries.

A report on how government and business can work together as they build back post-pandemic