Strengthening the Resilience of the Public Administrations After COVID-19 with the Common Assessment Framework. Case Study of the Vienna Department of Women’s Affairs (MA 57)

The case study examines the extent to which the use of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) has strengthened the resilience of the Women's Department of the City of Vienna during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Vienna Women's Department (MA 57) is the central point of contact for all women-related issues in the City of Vienna. It is committed to a gender-equal society and pursues, among other things, the full realization of women's rights, the end of gender-based violence and sexism in all its forms and the protection of women and children affected by violence. Furthermore, it strives for the self-determination and empowerment of women in all life situations. Accordingly, the services offered by MA 57 include information and events as well as counselling and support services for women. As these services are particularly focused on personal encounters and assistance, the COVID measures posed major challenges for the service delivery. To cope with this situation, MA 57 introduced new practices, such as developing the mobile working initiative during the lockdown, developing new formats to maintain accessibility when infrastructure collapsed, strengthening partnerships, utilizing new information and event channels, and using not-so-new forms of leadership and collaboration. The case study details why the MA 57 considers these innovative practices to be positively related to the use of the CAF, which has been successfully used in the MA for over a decade. The conclusions focus on the lessons learned about the role of the Common Assessment Framework in building resilience.

[The case study is part of a OECD project, funded by the European Union. Free download: https://www.oecd.org/gov/more-resilient-public-administrations-after-covid-19-8d10bb06-en.htm].