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The behaviours of both top- and middle-level managers matter for promoting open organisational cultures, mitigating integrity risks and fostering ethical behaviour by their staff. This report examines key issues around integrity leadership in Brazil’s federal public administration, based on an extensive survey of senior public officials. Informed and inspired by behavioural insights, it provides concrete recommendations for strengthening integrity leadership in Brazil.
Upper secondary education in Lithuania stands out internationally with one of the highest attainment rates across OECD countries. Yet the country and its young people receive relatively modest returns in terms of learning outcomes for the country's high rates of upper secondary completion. To address this issue, Lithuania is currently undertaking a series of reforms at the upper secondary education level. This report explores how Lithuania, and its young people can achieve higher returns on its investment in upper secondary education and provides Lithuania with policy recommendations to help improve it by strengthening vocational education pathways and by consolidating upper secondary certification.
This report analyses current trends of adaptation finance provided and mobilised by developed countries for developing countries. It explores potential action areas for international providers to scale up funding for climate change adaptation, including by unlocking the potential of the private sector. The analysis is anchored in the context of the USD 100 billion climate finance goal, initially set for 2020 and extended to 2025, while also providing insights to the broader and longer-term objective of supporting developing countries’ ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change.
This report explores evidence-based action areas to increase and accelerate the mobilisation of private finance for climate action in developing countries, and the role of international public finance providers in doing so. It draws on best-available data to provide disaggregated analysis of the sectoral, geographic and other features of private finance mobilised by public climate finance and presents key economy-wide, sector-specific, and institutional challenges to private finance mobilisation. The analysis is anchored in the context of the USD 100 billion climate finance goal, initially set for 2020 and extended to 2025, while also providing insights related to mobilising private finance for climate action in developing countries more broadly.
This report examines the innovative capacity of the public sector of Romania, exploring opportunities for the public sector to work in new and novel ways to improve outcomes. It assesses the current innovative capacity and suggests paths forward to enhance capacity. The report provides foundational evidence for the creation of an action plan to enhance the public sector’s capacity to innovate for impact.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a large and dynamic regional economic community (REC) with the second highest level of regional integration among all African RECs. It has also been at the forefront of regional investment policymaking in Africa, with the Finance and Investment Protocol, the Investment Policy Framework, and the SADC Model Bilateral Investment Treaty. However, like much of Africa, SADC faces difficulties in attracting foreign direct investment which can contribute to sustainable development in the region. This report introduces newly developed OECD tools and analysis to the SADC region, including both FDI Qualities and a database on investment incentives. It is designed as a baseline diagnostic to explore ways to reinvigorate the reform of the SADC investment climate in order to prepare the region for the African Continental Free Trade Area, while also focusing on how to improve sustainable outcomes from investment. The report explores the national regulatory framework encapsulated in national investment laws and how this compares with initiatives at a regional level, investment promotion and facilitation in SADC, investment incentives, investment for green growth and responsible business conduct.
Smart cities leverage technologies, in particular digital, to generate a vast amount of real-time data to inform policy- and decision-making for an efficient and effective public service delivery. Their success largely depends on the availability and effective use of data. However, the amount of data generated is growing more rapidly than governments’ capacity to store and process them, and the growing number of stakeholders involved in data production, analysis and storage pushes cities data management capacity to the limit. Despite the wide range of local and national initiatives to enhance smart city data governance, urban data is still a challenge for national and city governments due to: insufficient financial resources; lack of business models for financing and refinancing of data collection; limited access to skilled experts; the lack of full compliance with the national legislation on data sharing and protection; and data and security risks. Facing these challenges is essential to managing and sharing data sensibly if cities are to boost citizens’ well-being and promote sustainable environments.
This report provides an overview of the current sustainability disclosure policies and practices, the responsibilities of company boards and shareholder rights in Asia. The report also presents current trends in corporate sustainability globally and in Asia based on the OECD Corporate Sustainability dataset. Importantly, climate change is one of the most critical sustainability matters currently facing companies in most Asian jurisdictions where companies that account for two-thirds of total market capitalisation are experiencing climate change related financial risks.
The assessment report explores the innovative capacity of the Latvian public sector to understand how innovation can be better supported and leveraged to improve the public sector's effectiveness and impact. It provides an evidence base for the development of a public sector innovation strategy and action plan.
Knowledge of basic nuclear physics data is essential for the modelling and safe operation of all types of nuclear facilities. The de facto international standard format, Evaluated Nuclear Data File 6 (ENDF-6) format, was designed originally for 1960s era punch-card readers. The replacement of the system of codes built off this format has been recognised as an important initiative.
The ability to use increasingly high-fidelity nuclear physics, coupled to accurate uncertainties, is crucial for advanced simulations. This in turn requires more detailed and accurate data, then requiring improvements to the data storage standards, simultaneously enabling robust Quality Assurance and transfer of knowledge to the next generation.
In 2013, the NEA Working Party on International Nuclear Data Evaluation Co-operation (WPEC) launched a project to review the requirements for an international replacement for ENDF-6. The recommendations prompted the creation of a new Expert Group on a Generalised Nuclear Data Structure (GNDS) in 2016 that has used these requirements as the framework for a new format specification. Following rigorous international review, version 1.9 was unanimously approved as the first official published format in 2020. Since then, some 149 formal change requests were made to add new features and clarifications to the specifications, which were unanimously approved for publication in this release as version 2.0.
This Spotlight presents data and analysis on vocational education and training (VET) from Education at a Glance 2023. VET is a key component of most education systems in OECD countries. About one in three 25-34 year-olds have a vocational qualification as their highest level achieved, whether at upper secondary, post-secondary non-tertiary or short-cycle tertiary level.
The first part of the Spotlight focuses on upper secondary programmes, analysing their components and outlining the main challenges to countries aiming to improve their quality, while promoting equity and ensuring better labour-market opportunities for their graduates. The second part focuses on progression pathways open to VET graduates and higher-level vocational programmes. Taken together, the two parts of this spotlight demonstrate the huge diversity of OECD country VET programmes.
Volume 10 of the Series contains the consensus document on the “Environmental Considerations for Risk/Safety Assessment for the Release of Transgenic Plants” developed by the OECD Working Party on the Harmonisation of Regulatory Oversight in Biotechnology. Transgenic plant varieties are subject to official risk/safety assessment, science-based and case-by-case, before their potential release into the environment. The document contains general information on environmental risk/safety assessment, its key concepts, structure and planning. Annexes describe seven examples of environmental considerations routinely examined by assessors and taken from experience gained during such assessment: Invasiveness and weediness; Vertical gene flow; Organisms (animals); Soil functions; Plant health; Crop management practices; and Biodiversity (protected species and habitats/ecosystems). The purpose of this document is not to elaborate new terminology or to describe how to undertake an actual risk/safety assessment, but rather to outline an approach and provide illustrative examples for helping assessors in planning and structuring an environmental risk/safety assessment. This document should be of interest to regulators and safety assessors, as well as to plant breeders and the wider scientific community. More information, including other tools for environmental risk/safety assessment such as OECD consensus documents on the biology of crop species, are found at BioTrack Online.
What are the root causes of gender inequality? Building on the fifth edition of the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), the SIGI 2023 Global Report provides a global outlook of discriminatory social institutions, the fundamental causes of gender inequality. It reveals how formal and informal laws, social norms and practices limit women’s and girls’ rights and opportunities in all aspects of their lives. Globally, 40% of them continue to live in countries where gender-based discrimination is assessed as high or very high.
The report stresses how discriminatory social institutions curtail women’s and adolescents’ fundamental access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. It also sheds light on the gendered impacts of climate change and underlines how women can play a pivotal role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. To accelerate efforts aimed at achieving SDG 5 and eliminating the underlying and structural factors that hamper women’s empowerment, the report offers concrete policy actions. It calls for a gender-transformative approach to leverage crises and challenges into windows of opportunity to establish women and men as agents of change.
Investment in education technology has surged worldwide over the past decade and digital education technologies are now a key resource for OECD education and training systems. If used effectively, they promise to transform teaching and learning practices, to reduce learning inequalities and to create more inclusive and efficient education systems. However, countries’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic exposed shortcomings in the extent to which digital technologies are currently enabling high-quality teaching and learning, and underlined the need for supportive policies and conditions to make use of their potential. The rapidly improving capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) also bring new focus to the role of education policy in preparing learners for an AI-driven future.
This report seeks to guide governments in shaping digital education. Offering a range of perspectives for governments and education stakeholders, it analyses enabling factors that can support quality, equity and efficiency in the use of digital technologies in education systems. It provides a comprehensive review of current trends and emerging policies, covering school education, vocational education and training (VET) and higher education, highlighting pathways to support a cohesive and holistic policy framework for digital education.
Flanders experienced large inflows of immigrants over the past decade, coming from an increasingly diverse range of countries, with growth rates outpacing the Netherlands, France and Germany, as well as Belgium as a whole. While integration outcomes have improved in recent years, some of the core indicators remain unfavourable in international comparison, especially for non-EU immigrant women, refugees, and youth with migrant parents. Against this backdrop, Flanders has developed a comprehensive integration policy. This review, the fourth in the series Working Together for Integration, provides an in-depth analysis of the Flemish integration system, highlighting its strengths, weaknesses, and potential areas for improvement. Earlier reviews in this series looked at integration in Sweden (2016), Finland (2018) and Norway (2022).
This report assesses Romania’s efforts to strengthen its integrity and anti-corruption system. It looks at the achievements of the 2021-2025 National Anticorruption Strategy (NAS) as well as the challenges that remain, including addressing structural issues such as political engagement, the role and placement of ethics offices and the design and review of integrity plans. The report provides recommendations for mainstreaming central government integrity policies into practical and concrete actions at the sectoral level, with a view to improving implementation of the 2021-2025 NAS as well as future strategies.
A massive scaling up of investment is essential in emerging and developing economies to sustainably meet rising demand for energy, as well as to ensure that climate targets are met. Getting on track for net zero emissions by 2050 will require clean energy spending in emerging and developing economies to more than triple by 2030 – far beyond the capacity of public financing alone and therefore demanding an unprecedented mobilization of private capital.
This special report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and International Finance Corporation (IFC) examines how to scale up private finance for clean energy transitions by quantifying the investments required in different regions and sectors to build modern, clean energy systems, including achieving universal access. The new global energy economy represents a huge opportunity for growth and employment in emerging and developing economies. This report’s analysis identifies key barriers and how to remove them – and sets out the policy actions and financial instruments that can deliver a major acceleration in private capital flows for the energy transition.
The FinTech sector is a nascent market in the Czech Republic, with only around one hundred regulated or unregulated FinTech firms. This report analyses the Czech FinTech ecosystem and identifies possible hurdles to innovative development. The report also provides recommendations for designing a regulatory sandbox tailored to the country’s specificities and which could help alleviate some of the impediments to FinTech development. A sandbox could enhance the Czech authorities’ understanding of the impact of innovative mechanisms on financial activities, and enable supervisors to better monitor and ensure compliance of FinTech activities. It could also enhance communication between firms and authorities through targeted dialogue and customised guidance.
The Latvian government established the Housing Affordability Fund in mid-2022, a long-term self-sustaining financing model to channel investment into affordable housing. The fund is now being scaled up to ensure lasting impact on the Latvian housing market. This report identifies options for institutional arrangements, funding and financing opportunities, and operational tools to achieve this aim. It draws on the rich and diverse experiences of four peer countries in establishing and operating revolving fund schemes for affordable housing (Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Slovenia), and also reflects findings from engagement with a range of stakeholders in the Latvian housing sector.
The report analyses the policy development process in Ireland. It focusses on three main areas that shape policy development: evidence, implementation, and legitimacy. It also discusses the skills, capacities, methods and tools in the Irish public sector that support effective policy development. The report highlights Ireland’s strengths, identifies gaps, provides examples of good practices, and suggests a number of areas of opportunity and action to bolster the policy development system and improve policymaking.