What's one public sector innovation trend that governments should watch right now?

One obvious trend on the minds of many public officials is the adoption of AI in public services as well as core administrative and policy development practices. Many of these are explored in our recent Governing with Artificial Intelligence report. Technology is generating enormous energy and experimentation across OECD member countries, and while there is an abundance of early-stage initiatives, such as experiments and pilots, it is much less clear how governments will develop coherent strategies for moving from pilot to regular practice. It is equally unclear how they will evaluate whether their AI investments are actually delivering public value. That question of return on investment in public sector AI is an area of active work for us, and one where the evidence base is still being built.

This connects to the broader trend we identified in our latest Global Trends in Government Innovation report: report: governments are genuinely committed to building digital and innovative foundations for efficient public services, investing in scalable digital infrastructure, experimenting with emergent technologies such as automation, AI, and modular code, and expanding innovative and digital skills.

I should mention that OPSI is currently running its annual Call for Government Innovations - open to governments across the world - with a submission deadline of March 31, 2026. We have published over 1,000 innovations in the Case Study Library and featured detailed cases and analysis in annual Global Innovation Trends reports. The case examples we collect through these calls are what allow us to identify global trends each year, so if you are working in government and doing something you think others might find interesting, we very much want to hear from you.

 What makes innovation succeed in public administration?

From everything OPSI has observed across its country work, the honest answer is: innovation succeeds when it is systemic rather than accidental. Too often, we see promising projects driven by one enthusiastic individual or sparked by a crisis, and then they fade. Innovative activity is rarely systemic, being driven more by individual efforts within individual and isolated projects or in response to crises or individual organizational needs.

OPSI's work on innovative capacity identifies what changes that picture. Successful innovation requires four key conditions: a compelling driver to change, a genuine potential to act, real capacity to do so, and measured impact that reinforces the effort over time. In our country assessment work, we examine these four focus areas across three levels - individual, organization, and system - with each tied to specific signals that allow governments to map the enablers and barriers of their innovative capacity and identify priority areas for investment.

Critically, for innovations or innovative practices to be successful, they must be part of the overall public management culture and practices. They must be led, encouraged, and actionable across all levels, functions, mechanisms, and operations of government. This requires a portfolio approach, including both top-down commitment—leaders who create the conditions and signal what matters - and bottom-up adaptation from frontline officials who are closest to the problems.

How can governments better learn from each other's innovations?

This is something OPSI has invested in significantly, and the honest starting point is acknowledging that learning across borders is harder than it looks. Context matters enormously. What works in one country's regulatory, cultural, and institutional environment may not transfer neatly to another.

OPSI's work on cross-border government innovation identifies several approaches that genuinely work. Safe-to-fail experimentation is key for innovation in governments and is gradually becoming a tool in the toolbox. New practices developed from these efforts help governments move beyond organization-centric thinking to test ideas in ways that promote learning and manage risk - and the success of these efforts within countries has led governments to apply similar approaches in cross-border ways.

One concrete example is OPSI's own Gov2Gov Innovation Incubator, which facilitates structured problem-solving exchanges between public sector teams facing similar challenges. Our last round showcased a diverse set of innovative ideas from around the world. Stay tuned to OPSI channels for the next round coming soon.

Beyond structured programs, OPSI also regularly convenes informal network meetings and peer exchanges among public officials working on innovation across OECD member countries and beyond. These gatherings serve as a global platform - a space where practitioners can find each other, compare notes on what is and is not working, and build trusted relationships that make genuine knowledge transfer possible. Much of the most valuable learning between governments happens not through formal reports, but through these direct, practitioner-to-practitioner conversations.

The most important practice governments need in order to learn from others is to build institutional habits of looking outward - embedding comparative scanning into policy development, not treating international learning as an occasional conference trip. Unlike the private sector, governments rarely have intellectual property to protect. That absence of competitive incentive is an invitation and an obligation to share openly and learn from one another. When public administrations repeat mistakes that other governments have already made and documented, it wastes public resources and delays better outcomes for citizens. Hard-won lessons should circulate freely between civil servants, so that the frontier of innovation advances collectively rather than being rediscovered, country by country, at unnecessary cost. International sharing and learning become worth the effort.

What role do public officials play in driving innovation in government?

Public officials play an absolutely central role that is frequently underestimated in top-down reform strategies. OPSI's innovation skills research is quite clear: only a few public servants have innovation skills, yet those who do drive change in government.

OPSI's very recent research on innovation skills has pushed us to look beyond individual skills toward something more systemic. Anecdotally, we know of too many examples of individual civil servants attending intensive innovation training, only to return to a team in which they are unable to practice their new skills. This has led OPSI to focus increasingly on innovation-enabling skills and applied organizational-level capabilities that allow skills to be used, not just learned.

Leadership matters enormously here. At the leadership level, public sector managers need to create conditions to stimulate the creativity of employees for change and innovation. Innovation is not something that can be delegated to a standalone lab or unit. It requires leaders who treat it as a strategic responsibility, not a peripheral activity.