Summary:

Good governance in modern times requires attention not only to shifting relations between governments, citizens and parliaments, but to the effective functioning of government itself. One important issue is 'Distributed Governance' - a term coined in this publication to capture the notion of proliferating public organisations operating with some degree of separateness from core government ministries. Despite the fact that in many countries more than half of public employment and central public expenditure is carried out through such bodies, they have not been comprehensively studied from a governance perspective. Some important questions concerning these organisations that need to be addressed are: Does government have adequate oversight of them? How accountable are they? and To whom should they be accountable?

Distributed Public Governance: Agencies, Authorities and other Government Bodies presents the experience of nine countries with the governance of these bodies. It also draws preliminary conclusions from the work carried out on this topic by the OECD’s Public Management Service (PUMA).

Distributed public governance was addressed in an OECD joint conference in November 2001 with the Government of the Slovak Republic, and at two expert meetings in Paris. Additional papers addressing distributed public governance may be found in The OECD Journal on Budgeting (Volume 2, Number 1).

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