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This report outlines a strategy for managing fraud and corruption risks related to the European Structural and Investment (ESI) Funds in the Slovak Republic. It suggests targeted and tailored actions for the authorities responsible for these funds, building on their existing fraud and corruption risk management practices. The strategy and key actions draw from the OECD Recommendation of the Council on Public Integrity, as well as European Commission guidance and international standards of inter alia the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO), Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

This report discusses how steering innovation investment in public sector organisations through a portfolio approach can help governments respond to the multi-faceted challenges they face. Portfolio management is a well-known device in the financial sector, allowing for dynamic decision-making processes involving regular reviews of activity and ensuring a coherent distribution of resources among strategic options. The report illustrates how this approach can be applied by public sector organisations to reap a variety of benefits, including avoiding innovation fragmentation and single-point solutionism; tackling risk aversion and learning at the portfolio level; identifying synergies among projects and activities; building value chains among projects and programmes; and layering activities connected to complex reforms. The report also discusses the type of innovation investments or facets a portfolio can help to steer and what these look like in practice.

Violence against women remains a global crisis. Worldwide, more than one in three women have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. OECD’s inaugural conference on violence against women, entitled “Taking Public Action to End Violence at Home,” facilitated a survivor-centred exchange of ideas and experiences. Held on 5-6 February 2020, attendees convened to share experiences, practices and ideas on how to prevent, address, and eradicate intimate partner violence (IPV), a particularly insidious form of violence against women. Just a few weeks after this OECD conference concluded, the regional health crisis of COVID-19 in Asia had turned into a global pandemic. In less than a month, the entire world was grappling with the massive health, social, and economic effects of the crisis – including the consequences of millions of women becoming trapped at home with their abusers, as governments implemented containment measures to stop the spread of the virus. The issues, challenges, and solutions to intimate partner violence that were debated at OECD conference have taken on a new and even more pressing urgency in the face of the global crisis.

The OECD has collectively underlined the importance of a high quality regulatory environment since the mid 1990s when the Council adopted the 1995 Recommendation on Improving the Quality of Government Regulation and its checklist as the first international standard on regulatory quality, and the 1997 Report on Regulatory Reform and its Principles of good regulation.
Since 1997, the OECD has carried out a series of country reviews based on the Principles, which have documented progress in the reviewed countries. Twenty OECD countries have been reviewed. The reviews have been multidisciplinary, covering the broader economic context, competition policy, market openness, sectoral reforms and not least, the development of regulatory policies, institutions and tools to build up capacities for a high quality rule-making environment supportive of economic growth and specific policy goals. This work has been complemented by the specific research of the OECD secretariat and others on issues such as the link between product market reforms and economic performance. Ample material is now available to take stock of the progress made in OECD countries and to reflect on the continued relevance of the 1997 Principles.
This report integrates more detailed papers prepared for the committees and working parties responsible for regulatory management, competition policy and trade, as well as relevant papers prepared for the Economic Policy Committee.

This report provides a global assessment and outlook on wildfire risk in the context of climate change. It discusses the drivers behind the growing incidence of extreme wildfires and the attribution effect of climate change. It outlines the environmental, social and economic impacts of wildfires by illustrating the losses and costs observed during recent extreme wildfire events. Building on this, the report presents the findings of a cross-country comparative analysis of how countries’ policies and practices have evolved in recent years in light of observed and projected changes in wildfire risk. The analysis draws on in-depth case studies conducted in Australia, Costa Rica, Greece, Portugal and the United States. The report underlines the urgent need for governments to scale up climate change adaptation efforts to limit future wildfire costs.

Unlocking what drives tax morale – the intrinsic willingness to pay tax – can greatly assist governments in the design of tax policies and their administration, particularly in developing countries where compliance rates are low. This report builds on previous OECD research to identify some of the key socio-economic and institutional drivers of tax morale across developing countries, and seeks to test for evidence of the social contract by examining the impact of public services on tax morale. It also uses new data on tax certainty as an entry point to explore tax morale in businesses, where existing research is very limited. Finally, the report identifies a range of factors related to the tax system that may affect business decision making, how they vary across regions, and suggests some areas for future research. Overall, the report provides a range of suggestions for further work, and how tax morale considerations can be integrated into holistic tax compliance strategies.

This report evaluates how well EECCA countries have done in ensuring people’s access to adequate water supply and sanitation services since their Economic, Finance, and Environment Ministers adopted the Almaty Guiding Principles to support such efforts in 2000. Besides looking at trends in the technical and financial performance of the water sector, the report analyses the results of institutional reforms at different levels of governance, as well as financing arrangements. Analysis focuses mainly on urban areas, but some of the challenges in rural areas are also examined. The report draws policy recommendations to help countries stem the decline in the sector’s performance that has occurred over the last decade, despite opportunities provided by rapid economic growth in many EECCA countries in this period.

This book presents OECD policy conclusions and leading academic analysis on the financial management of terrorism risk nearly four years after the World Trade Centre attacks. It examines how the insurance market reacted after the 9/11 attacks, financial market solutions for terrorism risk, and possible roles for governments in the coverage of terrorism risk. It includes a table comparing terrorism insurance schemes in various OECD countries as well as an analysis of terrorism coverage in South Africa, Israel, and India.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by world leaders at the United Nations on 25 September 2015, sets out an ambitious action plan to improve the lives of people everywhere. On 14 February 2017, the Polish government adopted its Strategy for Responsible Development, which sets out over 700 actions to increase the income of Polish citizens and strengthen social, economic, environmental and territorial cohesion within the country. With its Strategy for Responsible Development, Poland has taken an important first step towards tackling all these issues. But achieving the SDGs will be a long journey with many hurdles, during which Poland will regularly have to adapt its strategies, actions plans and policy measures and refresh the commitment of all stakeholders. Exchanging experiences with other countries throughout the process on what works and what doesn’t can help the country successfully navigate this journey.

This report presents an overview of country initiatives concerning efficient, effective public services and open and innovative government. It focuses on four core issues:  delivery of public services in times of fiscal consolidation; a more effective and performance-oriented public service; promotion of open and transparent government; and strategies for implementation of a reform agenda.  These issues were discussed at the OECD Public Governance Ministerial Meeting held in Venice, Italy, in November 2010, hosted by the Italian Ministry for Public Administration and Innovation.

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.

Corruption in state-owned enterprises has a unique ability to undermine governments, markets and citizens’ wellbeing. While international standards promote integrity in the state-owned sector, their implementation remains a challenge. This handbook describes an innovative peer-learning programme – Compliance Without Borders – and its contributions to strengthening anti-corruption compliance in state-owned enterprises. It explains the benefits of galvanising the private sector to work with their state-owned counterparts in preventing corruption and levelling the playing field. By detailing how this new pair are successfully collaborating, the handbook also encourages others to join in leading by example.

With many regions in OECD countries facing declining working age populations, the geographical dimension of migration has become crucial for regional development. Where migrants settle within countries and how much they contribute to the local economies are important questions for policy makers. This report aims to address these questions using two novel datasets that offer internationally comparable information on migration and migrants' labour market integration across cities, towns and rural areas in OECD countries. The report also analyses different dimensions of regional development and provides new evidence on how migrants contribute to regional income, innovation, international trade and labour markets.

Public expenditure control has become a central element of economic policy in many countries. This report analyses budget practices and some recent innovations from the point of view of senior public servants in the central budget offices of nineteen OECD Member countries. It also summarises the institutional framework and procedures governing budgeting in each of these countries.

Despite potentially tremendous benefits, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lag in the digital transformation. Emerging technologies, as diverse as they are, offer a range of applications for them to improve performance and overcome the size-related limitations they face in doing business. However, SMEs must be better prepared, and stakes are high. SMEs make the most of the industrial fabric in many countries and regions, they create jobs (most jobs sometimes) and are the cement of inclusive and sustainable societies. The SME digital gap has increased inequalities among people, places and firms, and there are concerns that the benefits of the digital transformation could accrue to early adopters, further broadening these inequalities. Enabling SME digitalisation has become a top policy priority in OECD countries and beyond. The report looks at recent trends in SME digital uptake, including in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. It focuses on issues related to digital security, online platforms, blockchain ecosystems, and artificial intelligence. The report identifies opportunities, risks of not going digital, and barriers to adoption. It looks to concrete policy action taken worldwide to speed the SME transformation and raises a series of considerations to advance the SME digital policy agenda.

This report examines digitalisation’s effects on science, technology and innovation and the associated consequences for policy. In varied and far-reaching ways, digital technologies are changing how scientists work, collaborate and publish. While examining these developments, this book also assesses the effects of digitalisation on longstanding policy themes, from access to publicly funded research data, to the diffusion of technology and its absorption by firms. New and emerging topics are also explored. These include the roles of artificial intelligence and blockchain in science and production, using digital technology to draw on the collective intelligence of the scientific community, advances in the digitalisation of biotechnology, and possible "dark sides" of digitalisation.