ICE insights on working with governments to strengthen strategic infrastructure planning

The ICE-convened Enabling Better Infrastructure (EBI) programme brings together independent specialists to aid governments in implementing EBI’s eight principles for strengthening strategic infrastructure planning.

Since 2019, the programme has gathered global best practice and distilled it into actionable guidance.

Last year, the guidance was updated to engage governments in building ease, pace, and certainty into their strategic planning approach.

Alongside this, it also engaged in activities with 19 governments including events and 1-2-1 bespoke support.

This insights paper outlines key lessons learned from working with governments on the programme.

Insights will help inform a final update of the EBI guidance, to be launched at the end of 2025.

The paper outlines the following findings:

• Strategic support offered by EBI encouraged governments to have conversations about governance concerns (e.g. systems and tools for supporting change), including what was needed in the future.
• Working iteratively encouraged the development of stronger plans and initiatives overall, where needs could be met now and in the future.
• Peer-to-peer learning between government officials was key to fostering meaningful dialogue and the sharing of firsthand experience (e.g. learning how a particular decision or outcome could be achieved).
• Involving all stakeholders in infrastructure planning helped to find common ground in the language, approach, and focus of joint initiatives. This included agreement on the next steps.