The Behavioral Professional : Improving Decision-Making and Performance in the Public Sector

Over the past decade, governments, multilateral organizations, and think tanks have been increasingly using behavioral science as an additional tool to understand and tackle complex policy challenges in several sectors. Yet despite this increase in the use of behavioral science for policy design, little attention has been given so far to those individuals responsible for designing and implementing public policies and programs: policy professionals. This note aims to achieve three objectives. first, it highlights recent examples building on work done by the eMBeD team and the World Bank at large on how behavioral bottlenecks can hinder key development goals, from ensuring inclusive and equitable education for all (SDG4) to ensuring good health and well-being (SDG3), among others. Second, the note presents a behavioral framework highlighting the individual, group and institutional contexts that affect policy professionals. Finally, it showcases the relevance of the behavioral approach to a broad range of areas - including public service design, corruption and accountability, service design, access and delivery, civil servants' performance - by pinpointing common bottlenecks faced, and potential solutions to overcome them