Lessons Learned From Centre of Government Delivery Units

Abstract

A Delivery Unit (DU) can be defined as “a small group of highly-skilled people working at the cent[re] of government who help line ministries achieve outcomes for a number of initiatives that leadership deems ‘mission critical,’ or top priority” (Kohli & Moody, 2016, p. 1). The archetypal DU is based in the executive of the national government (e.g. prime minister, president) but there are examples of DUs that operate at the sub-national level, such as at the city level (e.g. the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina), the provincial level (e.g. the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina) or at the state level (e.g. the state of Pernambuco, Brazil) (Lafuente & González, 2018; Williams et al., 2021). DUs can also be based at the ministerial or sectoral level (e.g. education level) or at the front-line level (e.g. school level) (Williams et al., 2021).