- Funding Programme
- Year
- 2023
Next generation Behavioural Public Administration in Italy
The European Commission supported the Italian Department of Public Administration in strengthening the Italian public administration’s capacity to integrate evidence‑informed behavioural practices into decision‑making and administrative processes. The project delivered two behavioural pilots within administrations, an action plan to embed behavioural practices in government, and a blueprint report for adoption across EU Member States.
Context
The NextGenerationEU programme and the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan offered Italy an opportunity to improve efficiency, innovation capacity and evidence-informed policymaking. A key barrier to these reforms is the behavioural biases and bottlenecks that affect administrations. Civil servants, like all individuals, make decisions under conditions of limited time, information and resources. These constraints – combined with uncertainty, fiscal pressures, and increasingly complex policy challenges – shape how effectively governments deliver on their priorities. This project applied empirical insights on human behaviour to improve how civil servants think, decide and act within these real‑world constraints.
Support delivered
This project was implemented by the OECD in cooperation with the European Commission and the Italian Department of Public Administration. The project team delivered: a kick-off meeting; inception report; diagnostic analysis of the behavioural bottlenecks in Italian administration; two behavioural pilots, including data collection and analysis; action plan based on two workshops with Italian stakeholders; blueprint report; and a closing event in Rome. The project ran from the kick-off in December 2023 to the closing event in March 2026.
Results achieved
The project improved the Italian public administration’s planning processes. Pilot 1 surveyed 44,193 Italian civil servants and found that behaviourally informed messages significantly increased the selection of high-quality objectives in their organisational plans. Pilot 2, involving 8,283 public administrations, found that behaviourally informed reminders increased the share of administrations that published their plans on a central government portal by 23%. These pilots contributed to the Italian public administrations’ efficiency, improving public value for citizens. The findings of these pilots were embedded in an Action Plan for Italy to implement beyond the TSI, and a Blueprint Report for other governments to learn from.
More about the project
You can read the documents related to the project here: