Yesterday, Wednesday, February 25, 2026, the Board of Directors, Global Secretariat, and Advisory Board of the Local Public Sector Alliance (LPSA) met in person for the first time in the organization’s history at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service in New York City.
The gathering marked an important milestone for an Alliance that has operated globally— and largely virtually — since its founding in January 2022, by bringing its leadership together to reflect on where the Alliance should go next.
Drastic shifts in the global context, including changing patterns of international cooperation and global governance, require LPSA to adapt its strategic orientation. In response, the Alliance is repositioning its work so that multilevel governance is framed not simply as a technical reform agenda, but as a foundational element for global stability, effective service delivery, and sustainable development.
Against this backdrop, LPSA’s leadership reviewed LPSA’s Strategic Plan for 2026–2030, which builds on the Alliance’s rapid growth since 2022 and outlines how LPSA can elevate the global debate and catalyze action in support of a diverse, global community of practice. The Board also discussed the draft LPSA Funding Strategy for 2026-2030, developed in partnership with Connective Impact, focused on how to sustainably support the Alliance’s activities as a global professional network delivering value to practitioners working on decentralization and multilevel governance.
Discussions emphasized that for LPSA to pursue its mission, it must help practitioners solve real governance challenges; serve as a platform for bringing together and exchanging knowledge across institutions, countries and sectors; and connect the multilevel governance community with adjacent policy communities that rarely interact.
The meeting concluded with informal exchanges alongside colleagues arriving for the Global Roundtable on the Future of Decentralization and Multilevel Governance in a Rapidly Changing Context, reinforcing the Alliance’s defining feature: a big-tent community built on relationships as much as on ideas.
Photo Credit: NYU Center on International Cooperation.
