Governance: Our new theme of the month!

‘Governance is the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development.’ The World Bank

So it’s a new month, and you all know what that means, a new Wikiprogress theme! Over the last period we have focused on Post 2015 and Health and during the next few weeks we will be looking at Governance in relation to progress and well-being. Responsive and answerable institutions are key in contributing to societal well-being. Countries with effective, accountable and transparent governing bodies prosper ‘in a range of dimensions of human development and social cohesion’ (How’s Life Report). This blog is a means of introducing our new theme and highlighting a number of key resources related to governance that we plan to reference in the coming weeks.

- OECD’s Better Life Index  - The OECD Better Life Initiative provides a comprehensive understanding of what drives the well-being of people and nations and identifies what needs to be done to achieve greater progress for all. The Index uses eleven dimensions, including Civic Engagement and Governance in an attempt to present accurate, comparable and comprehensive well-being indicators.

According to the report a cohesive society is one where a citizens have a high confidence in their governing institutions and public administration. It seems that more than ever, citizens are demanding greater transparency from their governments. In the United Kingdom for example, the ruling parties are under permanent scrutiny from the country’s media and focus organisations like Transparency International. The Index cites transparency in communication and open access to regulations as promoters of government accountability, resulting in high voter turn out, increased participation in the legislative process and compliance with rules.

- 4^TH OECD World Forum, New Delhi - At the Forum in November last year, the OECD ran a session on Building effective and responsive institutions with the likes of Sue Taylor, the Director of the Social and Progress Reporting of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Arun Maira, a member of the Planning Commission in the Government of India speaking:

‘If you want to understand well-being ask the citizens. They understand.’ Arun Maira

The discussion identified some of the common characteristics of successful governing institutions including; effective regulatory frameworks, streamlined and efficient public services and tough anti corruption practices. It concluded by emphasizing the necessity of NGOs, civil servants and governments to work collaboratively in an effort to improve the well being of citizens.

- ODI – Politics and Governance – The Overseas Development Institute focuses much of its work on governance, providing resources on Democracies in Transition, Justice and Security Sector Reform, Politics and Service Delivery and Applied Political Economy. Since two-thirds of the world’s population now lives in a democracy of some sort, the ODI explores the socio-political and economic factors that shape transition processes in a bid to support hybrid democracies that are vulnerable to backsliding. The organization is currently focusing on elections, the interaction between different dimensions of governance transitions and political voice and accountability in a bid contribute to the post 2015 framework.  

Finally, make sure you check out the Wikiprogress page where all our articles related to the theme are kept. We look forward to bringing you governance related articles over the next month.

The Wikiprogress Team

Well-being goals for all

On October 16, 2012 almost 400,000 babies were born in the world. On that same day, approximately 1000 people from around the world, including economists, statisticians, policy-makers and representatives from business and civil society, met to talk about the future lives of these babies. The 4th OECD World Forum on Measuring Well-Being for Development and Policy Making was held in New Delhi, featuring around 70 presentations, four roundtables and several keynote lectures. The Forum provided a great opportunity for sharing knowledge and networking on Well-Being and Development.

Photo sourced by OECD

Issues discussed by participants included: factors shaping trends in poverty and inequalities; business models and practices holding greater promise to improve well-being at work and beyond; links between effective and responsive institutions and people’s well-being; obstacles to gender equality and the type of environment needed for the start-up and success of women-owned businesses; policies helping children and at-risk youth to move into adulthood; preventing environmental degradation; improving the capacity of people, business and policy-makers to manage the consequences of disasters and conflicts; how to strengthen social cohesion.

The OECD World Fora on ‘Statistics, Knowledge and Policies’ have become one of the most important rendez-vous of the global community working on Well-Being. 

The 4^th OECD Forum followed those held in Palermo (2004), Istanbul (2007) and Busan (2009). However, this forum marked a shift in the international well-being agenda. While previous Fora focused mainly on the “why” and the “how” to measure well-being, the 4^th OECD Forum looked at how well-being can be made actionable. The discussions at the Forum built on the OECD Better Life Initiative, an initiative which lies at the heart of this attempt to use improved well-being metrics to influence policy making.

But knowing what matters to citizens and where societies want to go is not enough to ensure that we will get there; this is one of the main messages coming out of the discussions held in New Delhi. 

We need to build our knowledge regarding what works or does not work to achieve better lives. We need new evidence and models to understand how people think and behave, and how policies can raise well-being given our new understanding. Part of the evidence is already there, though, and models are being developed. But the journey is long and will require the involvement of all actors—researchers coming from a range of disciplines, decision-makers, business, ordinary citizens.

Four additional key messages came out from New Delhi, and you can read the summary of conclusions here. The first is that the well-being agenda has made giant steps all over the world and that it is based on a common understanding of the issues. The second is that progress in measuring well-being has been uneven, with great advancements in areas such as subjective well-being but much more modest ones on measuring sustainability for example. The third is that more research is needed on the determinants of well-being, particularly on the role of policies. The fourth is that the well-being agenda is relevant for both developed and developing countries, although priorities may differ. The next OECD World Forum will take place in 2015 and be aligned with discussions on the outcomes of Rio+20 and the post-2015 agenda. The 5th Forum will thus be an important landmark to judge whether Development Goals will have become, indeed, Well-Being Goals for all.


By Martine Durand, OECD 

This blog fist appeared on the OECD Better Life Index site on 23 November, 2012 and is also available in French here. 

For further information on the 4th OECD World Forum on Measuring Well-Being for Development and Policy Making.

The Measurement Revolution - 4th OECD World Forum

Every so often an idea comes along that will change the world.  Not instantly though. A historical glance shows how big ideas that have gone on to transform societies are not often born with a Eureka moment: paradigms usually shift slowly. When Michael Faraday discovered the electric current it took almost half a century for Swan and Edison to create the light-bulbs which showed the world in a new light and greatly increased the amount of potentially useful hours in a day.

It takes time for people to understand and explore the potential of new ways of doing and being. That’s what was happening at last week’s OECD World Forum. There is now a consensus (following on from the creation of the Human Development Index and the Sarkozy commission) among many of the world’s leading statisticians and economists that we have to have a radical rethink about how to assess a country’s performance.

Not only is there consensus, there’s action. A group of technocrats you would never expect to challenge orthodoxy are engaged in a deeply political act. Countries at all stages of development from Canada to Mexico and Bhutan are actively trying to measure wellbeing, going beyond GDP to measure other aspects of life that seem to matter to people. The UK has heralded the 'Happiness Index’ and spawned a number of other initiatives aimed at quantifying the feelgood factor such as the Happy Planet Index. The old adage that ‘there’s more to life than money’ seems to have got through – at least in these quarters.

The move to broaden definitions of national progress has its roots in the wide realisation that GDP, so long the gold standard measure of performance, is seriously flawed. In his keynote speech at the conference Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz outlined how the economic focus has blinded us to other factors that affect our lives such as equality and the environment. It’s good for showing us how busy an economy is, he said, but too easily skewed by leaky tax regimes such as that currently found in Ireland. Other ready examples can be found in states with high levels of oil wealth. Progress may appear on the national balance sheet, but it rarely materialises as much- needed cash for cash-strapped pockets.

So if we don’t just measure the money, what else should we measure? That was the main focus of the discussion in Delhi. Health and education outcomes were obvious candidates but there was also elbow room for the suggestion that issues such as housing, quality of life in old age, nutrition, discrimination and even power are all worthy areas to measure  in terms of improvements in the collective human condition.

At this point the conversation tended towards the technical. There’s a broad agreement that we should be using multi-dimensional measures. There’s also much thought being devoted to whether such multiple measures can be brought to heel in the form of one composite mega-measure. It’s something the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative are looking to achieve.  Development Progress’s latest paper outlines a multi-dimensional dashboard approach to measurement of wellbeing and highlights some of the unexpected and encouraging results a broader look at the performance of African countries in the past decade can bring.

There remain good reasons not to get carried away just yet. Princeton Professor Angus Deaton contributed a reality check when he revealed evidence to suggest that money does make us happy after all, showing that, when taking a different look at the latest available data (admittedly from 2005), there was a clear correlation between higher income and higher assessments of happiness. It was left to Professor Deaton to make explicit too that happiness and wellbeing are highly subjective concepts. Whilst the utility and reliability of such emerging data can be called into question, it will remain a challenge to convince policy-makers to start applying any new findings to national decision-making.

In an interview shortly after his keynote speech Joseph Stiglitz was asked to explain why measuring wellbeing matters so much. ‘It’s quite simple,’ he said. ‘If we measure the wrong things, we do the wrong things.’ To capture a snapshot of people’s contentment with their lot in life will not prove an easy challenge, but on the evidence of the past week the crusading number-crunchers look set to rise to that challenge. One day we may well be thankful to them.

Jonathan Tanner
Development Progress

Development Progress interviewed a number of delegates at the 4th OECD World Forum in Delhi, including Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs, to get their views on the conference and wider issues involved in debates about the measurement of well-being.

This blog first appeared on 24 October 2012 on the Development Progress site and can be found here. 

Whats happening at the 4th OECD World Forum #Delhi2012?

As many of you will know, the 4^th OECD World Forum - on Measuring Well-Being for Development and Policy Making started on 16 October 2012. 

Building on the Better Life Initiative, the main objectives of the Forum are to further the discussions on the different aspects that make for a good life today and to promote the development and use of new measures of well-being for effective and accountable policy making. Here is a brief run down of the different sessions over the next four days. Don’t forget to watch Wikiprogress’s coverage of the forum on our live feed.

Don’t forget to watch Wikiprogress’s coverage of the forum on our live feed and remember to follow us on Twitter @wikiprogress and offer your own opinion to #Delhi2012 . Get the agenda, list of speaker and more from our special articles on the 4th OECD World Forum.

There will be four parallel workshops taking place on each day of the Forum, details below and round table. Speaker include Joseph Stiglit, Jeffrey Sachs, David Cameron and many more experts! 

Day 1- 16 October - Theme: Material Conditions   

Reducing inequalities and poverty

What are the main limits in the statistical system used for monitoring and reporting about inequalities and poverty? How important are these limits from the perspective of giving greater prominence to these issues in the domestic and international policy agenda?

The role of assets and their distribution

What are the most important analytical and policy issues that better micro statistics on household wealth would allow addressing?

Business, jobs and well-being

What are the most important dimensions of job quality and well-being at work where current metrics are lacking? What statistical initiatives are ongoing and what else remains to be done?

Improve housing and urban infrastructure

What are the most important dimensions of housing and urban infrastructure where current metrics are lacking? What statistical initiatives are ongoing and what else remains to be done?

Day 2- 17 October – Theme: Quality of Life

Improving Health Conditions

What are the main challenges to the health system that we will likely confront in the future? What type of measures would be needed to manage these emerging challenges?

Investing in education and skills

Why are better measures of education and skills essential to policy and decision-making? How we can ensure that they are developed, i.e. who needs to be persuaded in order to achieve more consistent implementation and how can this happen?

Increasing people’s subjective well-being

Is there enough knowledge and experience to identify best-practices in the production of better statistics in this field?

Building effective and responsive instiutions

What are the main links between effective and responsive institutions and people’s well-being?

Day 3 - 18 October – Theme: Gender Groups in Society 

Empowering women

What are the main factors limiting women’s empowerment in countries at different level of economic development? Do the available data and indicators provide adequate information on these factors? What are the priorities for action in the statistical field? Could indicators of women’s empowerment be better integrated into existing measurement frameworks (MDGs, etc.)?

Nurturing children

What are the key dimensions of child well-being and what indicators could be used to monitor them? Do these dimensions and indicators change as children develop? What are the priority areas for improving the measurement of child well-being?

Caring for the elderly

What are the most important factors bearing on the well-being of elderly people? What types of statistics and indicators should be developed and implemented in order to allow regular monitoring?

Recognising societal groups and minority rights

What are the most important life domains where these minority groups underperform relative to others? What are the most important drivers of these low achievements?

Day 4 - 19 October – Theme: Sustainability

Achieving environmental sustainability

What are the main threats to environmental sustainability? Which population groups are most exposed to environmental degradation? What are the economic risks associated with the unsustainable use of natural resources and the environment? How can we capture the dangers of a loss of natural capital to economic growth?

Lowering vulnerability to disasters andconflicts

What are the main implications for well-being of disasters and conflicts, in the short, medium and long term? What have we learned from recent experiences in how such disasters have been managed? Which are the populations most vulnerable to the consequences of different types of natural disasters?

Strengthening economic sustainability

What have we learned from the crisis in terms of the factors that put economic sustainability at risk? What type of statistics would have allowed better assessing the scale of the imbalances that were accumulating in the world economic system before the crisis burst?

Social Cohesion

Is the notion of ‘social cohesion’ one that could usefully inform policy discussions in developed and developing countries? What is its main manifestation?

Enjoy what should be a fascinating four days.

Robbie Lawrence

Wikichild Coordinator 

Official OECD-India Website: www.oecdindia.in