This policy brief discusses the role of effective governance, and in particular the role of the relationship between the state and people, in building countries’ resiliency and in responding to and managing nation-wide crises such as the COVID -19 pandemic.

This brief discusses the challenges of the COVID-19 emergency along key dimensions of national institutions highlighted in Sustainable Development Goal 16. It also explores how government institutions and civil society have innovatively responded to ensure that transparent, accountable, responsive and equitable mechanisms continue to govern the functioning of government processes and organizations, thus increasing the resilience of institutions to shocks such as the coronavirus pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing governments and societies to turn toward digital technologies to respond to the crisis in the short-term, resolve socio-economic repercussions in the mid-term and reinvent existing policies and tools in the long-term (see Table 1). Navigating through these challenging times requires governments to adopt an open government approach and to use digital communication channels to provide reliable information on global and national COVID-19 developments. 

This compendium aims to document these institutional arrangements in a simple and standardized way, with a view to facilitating exchanges on institutional practices and lessons learned among governments and other stakeholders. It covers the 47 countries that presented Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) at the United Nations High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in July 2019.

The statutory meetings, which are regularly held in the spring in Brussels, combined with a world-class event on public governance bringing together leading thinkers and partners in the field to delve into latest developments in public governance.