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Mindsets are ingrained, presumptive ways of thinking. They consist of beliefs and attitudes that a person has assimilated throughout their lifetime about themselves and the world around them. As such, mindsets are reflected in the way we think and act, shaping the way public leaders and public servants behave. Changing mindsets of leaders and public servants is essential to transform governance in support of the SDGs. The necessary institutional transformation for SDG achievement needs to be reflected in new behavioral changes embodied by the public service workforce.
The working paper “Reinventing public sector workforce training and institutional learning towards changing mindsets” drafted by experts of the UN Committee of Experts of Public Administration (UNCEPA) focuses on the need to reinvent public sector workforce training and institutional learning to change mindsets and advance the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Shifting mindsets is imperative for letting go of old beliefs and for creating new ones that support the transformation toward a greener, more resilient, and inclusive society. These new beliefs and work habits will enable institutions to become more effective, accountable, and inclusive, while supporting the 2030 Agenda. Going forward, governments could helpfully direct resources to retooling public service delivery where needed and to providing public sector workers with new knowledge, technical and practical skills and with an enabling environment for action.
The new mindsets that can help build more effective, inclusive, and accountable institutions include:
- Agility for systems thinking
- Collaboration for better coordination, integration and dialogue
- Innovation to support transformation
- Use of an evidence-based approach in support of sound policymaking
- Use of a results-based approach for impact assessments
- Foresight skills for long-term planning and sound policymaking
- Ethical behaviour and sound moral principles
- Openness in support of integrity and transparency
- Personal accountability in support of an accountability culture
- Digital skills to support digitalization of the public sector
- Empathy, relational skills and emotional intelligence
- Socially conscious leadership to safeguard people, the planet and prosperity for all and leave no one behind
- Responsiveness to provide people-centric services, with a special focus on vulnerable groups
- Support the achievement of intergenerational equity
- Sensitivity to gender and racial inequalities and towards vulnerable citizens so as to be able to promote equal opportunities
- Risk awareness and risk acceptance to cope with the dynamics and unpredictability of the multiple and interlinked global crises
- Openness to innovation.
The working paper also highlights the need to rebuild public trust, as a key indicator of how people perceive the quality of government institutions. Public trust is both an input to and an outcome of governance. There is a growing consensus that the lack of trust in public institutions and political leaders can reduce the perceived legitimacy of public institutions, deepen political polarization and favour populist movements. The COVID -19 pandemic further challenged public trust in government in some countries owing to corruption scandals and restrictions such as curfews.
Rebuilding public trust is critical for sustainable development, as the way institutions are set up and operate in practice influences the trust that people place in them and their ability to promote transformation at the societal level (such as through changing social norms or fostering whole-of-society approaches). This transformation is necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Building trust and reconnecting with people is therefore crucial in strengthening public institutions and enabling them to face ongoing challenges and to prepare for future ones.
Rebuilding public trust demands better public communication strategies and skills. The increasing number of digital platforms; the spread of misinformation and disinformation and the growing political polarization demonstrate the challenge of ensuring that people are only exposed to information of good quality. Public servants involved in communication need to play an active role in public communication strategies that are aimed at informing and inspiring people to take action towards more democratic, sustainable, resilient and green societies. The role of public servants involved in communication should be legitimized by expertise and professionalism.
In addition, public communication becomes more responsive when it relies on datafication, namely the transformation of social action into quantified data, as this allows governments to identify and analyse the interests and needs of people. Good practices in datafication-enabled communication use different sources of feedback and replace top-down dissemination of information with interactions with the public and two-way communication strategies. Collaborating with third-party messengers (such as online influencers and popular public figures) to reach particular social groups expressing low levels of public trust emerges as a new strategy. At the same time, the use of emerging technologies and communication on social media or other online channels carry risks of misuse, making their ethical use an imperative for public sector communicators. These communicators should be oriented by the principles of transparent and ethical information and debate. All these challenges call for capacity-building across public institutions and demand new skills and specializations and a democratic and citizen-centred mindset among public leaders and public servants.
By Alketa Peci, Vice-Chair of the UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA) and Professor of Public Administration and Government, Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration, Getulio Vargas Foundation