Browse by: "2015"

Water is abundant in Brazil, but unevenly distributed across regions and users. Remarkable progress to reform the sector has been achieved since the 1997 National Water Law, but economic, climate and urbanisation trends generate threats that may jeopardize national growth and development. The consequences are particularly acute in regions where tensions across water users already exist or are likely to grow. The report is the result of a policy dialogue with more than 100 stakeholders at different levels in Brazil. It assesses the performance of Brazil’s water governance and suggests policy recommendations for strengthening the co-ordination between federal and state water policies and for setting up more robust water allocation regimes that can better cope with future risks. The report concludes with an action plan, which suggests concrete milestones and champion institutions to implement those recommendations.

For most countries in the OECD, 2015 is the seventh or eighth year of dealing with the budgetary consequences of the economic and financial crisis. These years have been marked by challenges of fiscal retrenchment of a scale and nature unprecedented in modern times. Previous OECD publications have tracked the fiscal policy responses adopted by OECD governments during the early years of the crisis (2007-2012). This book takes stock of how these responses have evolved and in recent years, up to 2014/15. Two points are apparent from the outset: the response to the crisis has had repercussions for virtually every aspect of budgetary governance; and there are clear lessons for governments about the conduct of fiscal policy – including in its institutional aspects – that should inform future decisions and the agenda of budgetary reform.

The public sector has to become more innovative if it is to tackle today’s complex challenges and meet society’s changing expectations. But becoming truly innovative requires deep and broad changes to organisational culture and operations. Drawing on evidence emerging from the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation’s collection of innovative practices from around the world, this report looks at how to create a government where innovation is encouraged and nurtured.

Strategically managing crises is an essential responsibility of governments. Often critical decisions need to be made swiftly under difficult and complex conditions, as crises’ impacts may spread beyond national borders and can trigger significant economic, social and environmental knock-on effects. Governments have a significant role to play in strengthening the resilience of their populations, communities and critical infrastructure networks. This report highlights the changing landscape of crises that governments are confronted with today. It discusses new approaches to deal with both traditional and new kinds of crises, and invites reflection on how best governments can adapt to change. Topics covered include capacity for early warning and “sense-making”, crisis communication and the role of social media, as well as strategic crisis management exercises. Finally, the review proposes practical policy guidance for strategic crisis management.

This report reviews the rationales offered by national governments for including or maintaining certain corporate assets in state ownership. Drawing from responses from 24 countries to a questionnaire based on the OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises (the “Guidelines”), the report aims to provide guidance to authorities seeking to reform or review their ownership policies. It does so, first, by providing provides an inventory of national practices regarding the application of the Guidelines recommendation that governments should develop and issue an ownership policy that defines the overall objectives of state ownership, the state’s role in the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and how it will implement its ownership policy. Second, the report illustrates how the state enterprise ownership policy is applied in situations where new SOEs are created, or when the state decides to terminate its enterprise ownership. The report was reviewed by the OECD Working Party on State Ownership and Privatisation Practices, which oversees implementation of the Guidelines, and is current as of October 2014.

This report assesses the current trends, drivers, obstacles, mechanisms, impacts, costs and benefits of stakeholder engagement in the water sector. It builds on empirical data collected through an extensive survey across 215 stakeholders, within and outside the water sector, and 69 case studies collected worldwide. It highlights the increasing importance of stakeholder engagement in the water sector as a principle of good governance and the need for better understanding of the pressing and emerging issues related to stakeholder engagement. These include: the shift of power across stakeholders; the arrival of new entrants that ought to be considered; the external and internal drivers that have triggered engagement processes; innovative tools that have emerged to manage the interface between multiple players, and types of costs and benefits incurred by engagement at policy and project levels. This report provides pragmatic policy guidance to decision makers and practitioners in the form of key principles and a Checklist for Public Action with indicators, international references and self-assessment questions, which together can help policy makers to set up the appropriate framework conditions needed to yield the short and long-term benefits of stakeholder engagement.

This review analyses public governance in the Slovak Republic and provides recommendations to support ongoing comprehensive public administration reform. The analysis is structured around five key areas: the centre of government’s capacity to steer and lead policy development and implementation; analytical and evaluation capacities; human resources management and civil service; e-government; transparency and integrity in the public administration. The review identifies two main themes running through these five areas: The first is the need for more effective whole-of-government co-ordination of strategy-setting and implementation, led by the centre of government. The second is the need to generate and use evidence more effectively when making decisions.

This volume collects expert papers on: the trends and challenges of regulatory policy today; regulatory impact assessment; stakeholder engagement; and ex-post evaluation. These papers provide background material for the 2015 edition of the OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook. They summarise the knowledge to date on these topics and underline progress made by countries in establishing the conditions for good regulation as well as the remaining challenges.

This review takes stock of the development and implementation of regulatory reform at a critical juncture for Lithuania. Confronted with the challenge of supporting growth and competitiveness, Lithuania has embarked upon an ambitious reform programme that addresses not only the development of new regulations but also the inspection and enforcement processes that support the effective implementation of these regulations with the least administrative burden for citizens and businesses. This is relatively rare among OECD members and the review assesses this comprehensive reform programme with a special focus on inspection and enforcement. First in its kind, the review benchmarks Lithuania's reforms against the OECD Best Practice Principles on Regulatory Enforcement and Inspection. The review identifies practical recommendations for strengthening regulatory effectiveness and support growth and competitiveness.

The Open Government Review of Morocco is the first of its kind analysing a country’s open government policies and practices and their institutional and legal frameworks for implementation against OECD instruments. By bringing together a multitude of OECD instruments and expertise in different areas of public governance, the Review provides Moroccan policy makers, public sector officials and civil society activists with practical indications on how to improve and successfully implement their national open government agenda. In addition, the Review contains a list of recommendations on which to build Morocco’s Action Plan for the Open Government Partnership.

This review analyses progress and challenges of open government data in the Polish national context. It is based on existing OECD methodology and formulates recommendations that aim to help Poland improve open government data efforts and achieve impacts. The recommendations take into account the departing level of the Polish context and focus on priority needs, which in the case of Poland is the establishment of an “infrastructure” to support coherent and sustainable efforts across the administration: creation of an ecosystem of related and co-operating actors, establishment of a supportive governance framework, development of the needed skills and culture among civil servants.

In parallel to a sweeping structural reform agenda, Mexico announced in 2013 a new approach to housing and urban policy. Calling for a more explicit qualitative focus on housing and the urban environment, the policy shift is a welcome development. Mexico urbanised more rapidly than most OECD countries in the past half-century, in part as a result of the expansion of housing finance led by INFONAVIT and facilitated by policies aiming to expand access to formal housing. Yet the quantitative push for formal housing came with quantitative costs: inefficient development patterns resulting in a hollowing out of city centres and the third-highest rate of urban sprawl in the OECD; increasing motorisation rates; a significant share of vacant housing, with one-seventh of the housing stock uninhabited in 2010; housing developments with inadequate access to public transport and basic urban services; and social segregation. How can the Mexican authorities “get cities right” and develop more competitive, sustainable and inclusive cities? How can they improve the capacity of the relevant institutions and foster greater collaboration among them? How can INFONAVIT ensure that its lending activities generate more sustainable urban outcomes as it also fulfils its pension mandate and help Mexicans save more for retirement?

China needs a new model of urbanisation to match the shift to a new model of growth. For decades, both urbanisation and growth have been based on robust export demand, cheap labour, cheap land and artificially low pricing of environmental externalities. None of these can support growth or urban development in the future. This review examines the major challenges associated with the shift to a new model of urbanisation, looking at a range such issues as social and labour-market policies, land use and transport planning, urban planning, urban governance and public finance. The review presents a new assessment of China’s major cities, which defines functional urban areas based on settlement patterns and commuting zones rather than cities defined as administrative units. The results show, among other things, that China has many more mega-cities, with populations above 10 million, than the official data suggest. The good news for China is that the reforms needed to foster what the authorities call “people-centred urbanisation”, while complex, are coherent with one another and supportive of the broader shift to a growth model that relies more on domestic demand and productivity growth.

This review finds that while Mexico has taken important steps in addressing the urban challenges in the Valle de México, Mexico’s largest metropolitan area, there is a need for major metropolitan governance reform.  Serious urban governance failings are inhibiting adequate responses to critical urban development priorities - regeneration, access to adequate housing, reliable and safe public transport, and environmental protection. Several measures are currently being implemented. However, these tools and reforms will not produce the desired solutions to urban problems in the absence of metropolitan thinking, strategic regional planning, and improved co-ordination and collaboration across levels of government.

Bringing together the city of Krasnoyarsk and six adjacent smaller cities and rural districts, the Krasnoyarsk Agglomeration is increasingly emerging as the main economic hub of Eastern Siberia. Its relative weight in both population and economic activity continues to grow. This review examines the Agglomeration’s performance and potential, particularly with reference to such critical challenges as internal and external connectivity, human capital formation and innovation. These issues are analysed in the context of Krasnoyarsk’s unusual economic geography, which involves tremendous natural wealth, but also remote location, severe climatic conditions and relatively low density of settlement. Its experience is thus relevant to many remote, resource-rich regions across the globe.

Regulations are the rules that govern the everyday life of businesses and citizens. They are an essential instrument in the hands of government to promote economic growth, social welfare and environmental protection. However, regulations can also be costly and ineffective in achieving their objectives. The Regulatory Policy Outlook is the first evidence-based analysis of the progress made by countries to improve the way they regulate. Based on a unique survey filled by all OECD countries and the European Commission, the Outlook assesses progress in establishing the conditions for good regulation. It provides unique insights into the organisation and institutional settings in countries to design, enforce and revise regulations. It uncovers the areas of the regulatory cycle that receive too limited attention from policy makers, and identifies actors who have an important part to play to improve the way regulations are developed, implemented and evaluated. It reviews the use of three critical tools of regulatory policy (Regulatory Impact Assessment, stakeholder engagement and ex post evaluation) and proposes options to use them in a more strategic manner to inform the development and delivery of regulations.

This publication examines public governance arrangements in Finland and Estonia in two key areas: whole-of-government strategy steering and digital governance. This integrated review reflects the fact that the two countries face common challenges in setting and co-ordinating the implementation of whole-of-government strategies.

The new OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises provide an internationally agreed benchmark to help governments assess and improve the way they exercise their ownership functions in state-owned enterprises. Good corporate governance of state-owned enterprises is a key reform priority in many countries. Improved efficiency and better transparency in the state owned sector will result in considerable economic gains, especially in countries where state ownership is important. In addition, creating a level playing field for private and state-owned enterprises will encourage a sound and competitive business sector. The Guidelines, first adopted in 2005, provide a set of good practices on the legal and regulatory framework for state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the professionalisation of the state ownership function and the corporate governance arrangements of SOEs. This new version of the recommendation was developed in the light of almost a decade of experiences with its implementation and a number of thematic and comparative studies, developed on the basis of the earlier version of the Guidelines, that showed the need for, and supported, their revision, including in areas such as disclosure and transparency, public-private competition, board practices and funding and financing of SOE.