To that end, the Kuwait Public Policy Centre (KPPC) has worked with international experts to develop policy recommendations tailored to reform administrative and bureaucratic practices, to reinforce transparency, accountability, and efficiency in the government.

Following the established KPPC workflow (see workflow), the Center began by identifying the current gaps and challenges in the policies under the public administration in the KNDP 2015-2020. This resulted in the development of a policy paper titled Kuwait National Development Plan 2015/2020 and Public Administration Policies: Overview of Key Challenges, Gaps and Way Forward. This paper’s findings were based on thorough literature review and evidence-based research concluding in highlighting key priority areas that can be tackled within the upcoming KNDP. These priority areas include, but not limited to government transparency and accountability, building an effective world class civil service system, integrating digital technologies into government business, and strengthening the organizational core of public administration.

Based on the challenges identified in the above-mentioned policy paper, a research agenda was, then, derived to establish the research roadmap that KPPC would take to embark on the policy research. This policy agenda, titled KPPC Research Agenda for the Public Administration Pillar, established key priority research areas that the KPPC would undertake such as, but not limited to: evaluating the impact of digital technologies for government work, improving government employee performance, reforming public sector pay policies, and becoming a data driven government.

Based on the Research Agenda (as exemplified above) and capitalizing on the KPPC’s partnership with the University of Ottawa (See Partnership page); the center sought the expertise of the center of Governance at the University of Ottawa which is its forte is in governance and performance management. With a drive to build of international best practices and lessons learned from top-class administrations, a policy paper titled Enhancing the National Performance Management System: What Can be Learned from the Canadian Experience? was developed. This paper utilized the Canadian model as a benchmark to conduct a comparative study on the Performance Management System to tackle its main challenges faced in Kuwait; such as weak accountability for civil servants, lack of ties between financial planning and performance outcomes, not enough citizen-centric policies, and lack of performance measurement. The policy paper also outlines the main strengths and challenges of the current Kuwait’s performance management system.

With the objective of informing the development of the upcoming KNDP 2020-2025 and based on the challenges and gaps identified in the policy paper, the KPPC has been working on the development of an evidence-based white policy paper that sets the roadmap for the Effective Public Administration Pillar: “Towards an Integrated Public Administration Reform for the Digital Governance”. The white paper aims to address the policy gaps and recommend policy options that are based on thorough evidence and research as well as backed with a participatory approach with relevant stakeholders.