Sixteen Habits of Highly Effective Governments

All experts agree that the competitive and comparative advantage of a nation is directly proportional to the effectiveness of its government. An effective government is understood as a government that “delivers” what it “promises” in foundational documents, legislation, regulations and political forums.  Gone are the days when the competitive and comparative advantage of nations was primarily determined by resource endowments of nation states. Today, resource-scarce nations like Singapore, New Zealand, Ireland, and Switzerland, to name a few, are considered prosperous simply because they have effective governments.

Unfortunately, the consensus seems to end here; alas, three people looking at the performance of the same government organization can, and often do, come to three different conclusions – good, bad, or ugly. That is, the performance of a government organization seems too often to lie in the eyes of the beholder.

Contrast this with the situation in the private sector. When a private enterprise makes an announcement that it has made a 300-million-dollar profit, everyone takes this announcement at its face value. Not because the markets, investors, and analysts trust the private sector more, rather because this number is based on accounts that are consistent with the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). The private entity prepares its accounts using a standard definition of working capital, fixed assets, and depreciation. Furthermore, before the financial statements are approved by the board of the company, these accounts are audited by an external auditor, using the GAAP principles.

The Commonwealth Secretary General posited a grand challenge to the Governance Directorate of the Commonwealth Secretariat: findthe counterpart of GAAP principles for the public sector. After 15 training programmes for some 2000 of the senior-most civil servants in 56 countries of the Commonwealth, the Heads of Public Service of these countries approved a set of Generally Accepted Performance Principles (GAPP) in June 2022. We call them the Sixteen Habits of Highly Effective Governments.

The diversity that exists among nations and their governments makes us often overlook a trio of key facts:

1. First, many of the problems involved in managing government are a result of a few underlying causes.
2. Second, the underlying causes of poor government performance are similar in nature across a diverse set of countries.
3. Third, countries have successfully dealt with these (few) underlying causes using remarkably similar approaches.

The 2000+ participants of the Commonwealth’s performance training programmes looked for what works and what doesn’t work, and distilled the key aspects of the methodology for improving government performance, culling out the generally applicable (and acceptable) principles. The institutional context of each country may differ a little, but participants were struck by the similarities and relevance of their experience.

A broad consensus emerged on the relevance of the following sixteen principles for designing government performance management systems in individual member countries. These principles then constitute the Generally Accepted Performance Principles (GAPP). They also represent a set of sixteen habits that are found in governments that seem to work faster, better and cost less. Included below are the first four habits while later this week the balance will be described.

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