Whole-Of-Government

The whole-of-governement approach: regulation, performance, and public sector reform
Christensen and Laegreid
I. Introduction
In the second generation of modern public-sector reforms (those following two decades of New Public Management reforms) there has been a change of emphasis away from structural devolution, disaggregation, and single-purpose organizations and towards awhole-of-government (WOG) approach.
One pertinent issue is whether WOG approach should be seen as breaking with the past, i.e. transforming the main features of NPM, or whether it should instead be construed as re-balancing the NPM system without changing it in any fundamental way.
II. Why whole-of-government initiatives?
Main arguments for WOG initiatives, which constitute a reaction to negative experienceswith the NPM reforms such as structural devolution, performance management, and “single-purpose organizations”.
a. Reaction to the “siloization” and “pillarization” of the public sector in which these reforms resulted. The principle of “single-purpose organizations”, with many specialized and non-overlapping roles and functions, may have produced too much fragmentation, self-centered authorities,and lack of cooperation and coordination hence hampering effectiveness and efficiency.
b. Structural devolution, which entailed transferring authority from the central political-administrative level to regulatory agencies, service-producing agencies, or state-owned companies, may have produced disadvantages of other kinds. The effect has been to deprive the political and administrative leadershipof levers of control and of influence and information, raising questions of accountability and capacity. WOG measures, particularly ones involving a reassertion of the center, reflect the paradox that political executives are more frequently being blamed when things go wrong, even though they actually sought to avoid blame through devolution.
c. WOG is seen by some as an efficiency measure and ananswer to budgetary pressure, contradictory though that may sound following the introduction of organized fragmentation in the name of efficiency under NPM. A vertical tightening of the system combined with increased horizontal collaboration may now be seen as more efficient than a more fragmented system.
d. There has been progress in ICT technology, which reduces the cost of horizontalcommunication and coordination. There has been a shift of intellectual attention away from atomistic models towards a greater emphasis on holistic approaches.

III. What is “whole-of-government”?
In response to the increased fragmentation caused by previous reform programs, Anglo-Saxon countries (UK, New Zealand, Australia, Canada) adopted coordination and integration strategies, with the slogans:“joined-up government” (JUG) and “whole-of-government”.
The concept JUG was first introduced by Blair government in 1997, and a main aim was to get a better grip on the “wicked” issues straddling the boundaries of public-sector organizations, administrative levels, and policy areas. JUG was presented as opposite of “departamentalism”, tunnel vision, and “vertical silos”.
JUG denotes the aspiration toachieve horizontal and vertical coordination in order to eliminate situations in which different policies undermine each other, to make better use of scarce resources, to create synergies by bringing together different stakeholders in a particular policy area, and to offer citizens seamless rather than fragmented access to services.
The overlap with the WOG concept is obvious:“Whole-of-government denotes public services agencies working across portfolio boundaries to achieve a shared goal and an integrated government response to particular issues. Approaches can be formal or informal. They can focus on policy development, program management, and service delivery”.
The WOG scope is pretty broad: WOG policymaking and WOG implementation, between horizontal linkages and vertical...