As the Executive Director of the Research Institute for Public Administration at the German Post-Graduate School of Administrative Sciences in Speyer I would like to welcome warmly all those present at this expert meeting. I would also like to thank the Public Management Service at OECD for doing the intergovernmental partnership project in partnership with the Research Institute for Public Administration. The Speyer Institute is the only non-universitary research institution in Germany in the field of public administration. That is why we endeavor to be the prime interlocutor internationally. We co-operate with numerous re-search institutions abroad, ranging from the Academy of Economics in Mos-cow to the National Academy of Public Administration in Washington. But collaboration with an international organization is something exceptional even for us.