This report updates and expands the assessment and the recommendations of the 2014 OECD Review of the Central Administration in Kazakhstan in two specific areas: the mechanisms and structures for strategy and policy making; and the functions of the executive and its relations with its subsidiary bodies. In both these areas, Kazakhstan’s government has adopted a gradual approach to reforming the organisation and practices that it inherited from the Soviet Union. But in recent years the global recession and the slump in commodity prices have put Kazakhstan’s model of development under strain and increased the need for further progress in modernising the country’s governance structures. The government is aware of this, and is currently engaged in numerous reform initiatives in accordance with the 100 Concrete Steps programme set by the president in 2015. The report reviews the measures recently taken or under consideration in the aforementioned areas, identifies their strengths and weaknesses and proposes avenues for further progress.