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Mainstreaming integrity policies throughout a public administration is a common challenge in many countries. Brazil’s Office of the Comptroller General (CGU) has implemented a series of measures to do so, including establishing the Public Integrity System of the Federal Executive Branch (SIPEF). This report analyses these recent developments and provides recommendations on how to better promote a culture of integrity through the Integrity Management Units with targeted support by the CGU. The report also highlights opportunities to improve the clarity and coherence of policies to promote public integrity and public ethics, manage conflicts of interest, and foster integrity risk management by streamlining these areas under the umbrella of public integrity.
With the development and entry into force of the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement in 1995, the international community made a commitment to strengthen Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs), established to deal with the management of shared high seas resources. This study takes stock of the changes made in RFMOs, highlighting a gradual process of improvement that has translated into significant success stories. While there is no single recipe for this process, ensuring that the fundamental building blocks are in place to help create and maintain the economic and political momentum for change is important. Altering the underlying economic incentives may help to better align the interests of member countries, allowing coalitions for change to develop within the membership. The study and its analysis is built on evidence from a range of case studies of RFMOs, most notably the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CSBT), the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organisation (NAFO) and the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC).
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.
SMEs that grow have a considerable positive impact on employment creation, innovation, productivity growth and competitiveness. Digital technologies and global value chains offer new opportunities for SMEs to participate in the global economy, innovate and strengthen productivity. Yet SMEs are lagging behind in the digital transition and are disproportionately affected by market failures, trade barriers, policy inefficiencies and the quality of institutions. A cross-cutting approach to SME policy can enhance SME innovation and scale-up, as well as their contributions to inclusive growth. This includes a business environment conducive to risk-taking and experimentation by entrepreneurs, as well as access to entrepreneurship competencies, management and workforce skills, technology, innovation, and networks.
More than 8 000 large multi-purpose water infrastructures (MPWIs) around the world contribute to economic development, as well as water, food and energy security, encompassing all human-made water systems including dams, dykes, reservoirs and associated irrigation canals and water supply networks. Focused on the specific case of the Shardara MPWI located in Low Syr-Darya Basin, South Kazakhstan and Kyzyl-Orda oblasts (provinces) of Kazakhstan, this report looks at the choice and design of MPWI investment strategies that ensure a high economic return on investments and potential bankability, based on application of a computer model and lessons learned from 15 international MPWI case studies.
Korea is confronting a serious challenges. It has to improve income equality in the context of a severe demographic transition. Such a transition, from one of the youngest populations in the OECD at present to the second oldest by 2050, may boost the need for public spending and slow economic growth. In this context and as the pace of population ageing is accelerating, it is important to act quickly in a wide range of areas:
-Policies to sustain Korea’s growth potential in the face of falling labour inputs;
-Measures that improve both growth and equality;
-Carefully-targeted increases in social spending to reduce inequality and poverty;
-Financing higher social spending, with priority given to a reform of tax and social security that minimises the negative impact on output growth.
Against the background of these broad challenges, which are discussed in a specific, setting-the-ground, Chapter, the report suggests policy options, based on the practices and reforms of other countries, in the following four areas: I) Income Distribution and Poverty; II) Tackling the Duality of the Labour Market; III) Early Childcare; and IV) Moving beyond Hospitals to better Care in the Community.
Developing countries want to join in the globalisation process. However, the increasing complexity of global markets, the new challenges of the multilateral trading system and the competing demands of regional, bilateral and multilateral trade agreements confront developing countries with an expanding array of competitiveness and policy challenges. And, in many cases, they lack the institutional and human resource capacity to meet these challenges.
The DAC Guidelines on Strengthening Trade Capacity for Development have been prepared on the basis of an emerging international consensus and understanding of how the international community can work together more effectively. They intend to help developing countries enhance their capacity to trade and participate more effectively in the international rule-making and institutional mechanisms that shape the global trading system. They also provide a common reference point for the trade, aid and finance communities, putting trade capacity building in the context of comprehensive approaches to development and poverty reduction.
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.
The MENA region registered relatively dynamic economic growth and investment rates during the first decade of the century, even during the global economic and financial crisis. This was helped by important reforms by many governments to increase economic openness, diversification, private sector development and institutional reform. The participation of Tunisia and Jordan in the Open Government Partnership, the massive investment in infrastructure by Morocco and Egypt to increase connectivity and improve participation in global trade, and the efforts of the United Arab Emirates to diversify its economy demonstrate the great potential of the region to achieve progress. However, recent political instability and security threats have considerably slowed economic prospects. Reforms have not succeeded in tackling deeper structural challenges, such as corruption, unemployment, uneven development and unequal opportunities, especially for disadvantaged regions, women and youth. Appropriate policy responses are needed to regain stability and lay the foundations for a more open economy and a more inclusive development model. While the MENA region is profoundly heterogeneous, there are significant common economic and institutional trends that support the need for more concerted action to exploit the immense potential of the region and ensure its fruitful integration into the global economy.
The governance of skills systems has always raised a number of challenges for governments. Being at the intersection of education, labour market, industrial and other policy domains, managing skills policies is inherently complex. Addressing these challenges is more than ever crucial as globalisation, technological progress and demographic change are putting daunting pressures on skills systems to ensure that all members of society are equipped with the skills necessary to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Strengthening the Governance of Skills Systems: Lessons from Six OECD Countries provides advice on how to make the governance of skills systems effective. Building on the OECD Skills Strategy 2019, which identified four main challenges of skills systems governance, the report presents examples of how six different countries (Estonia, Germany, Korea, Norway, Portugal and the United States) have responded to one or several of these challenges. It also outlines concrete policy recommendations together with a self-assessment tool which provides guidance to policy makers and stakeholders for designing better skills systems that deliver better skills outcomes.
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 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.
This report analyses the legislative and institutional framework in France relating to the transparency and integrity of foreign influence activities. It identifies concrete policy measures adapted to the French context to make foreign influence activities more transparent, and to discourage foreign interference attempts that are made notably through opaque lobbying and influence activities. It also ensures that the risk of foreign interference is better taken into account when public officials move between the public and private sectors.
This report presents an assessment of Mexico's recent education reforms. Education systems worldwide require continued policy efforts in essential areas to improve student learning, such as: the need to prioritise equity; providing learning environments that are fit for the 21st century; ensuring that schools are run and staffed by high-quality professionals who are well supported; and designing evaluation and assessment frameworks that support schools and assist policy makers in promoting effective student learning and quality of education for all. Mexico's education system has evolved in this direction, but many of the recent reforms need time to mature and flexibility to be adjusted to ensure schools can deliver quality education.
In Mexico, like in many other countries, there is a considerable distance between national policy making and the learning that happens in schools. Closing this gap requires substantial resources, capacity and support from state authorities, who have an important role to play as operators of the system, as well as from education stakeholders across the country. In complex education systems, implementation is not only about executing the policy but also building and fine-tuning it collaboratively. This OECD report aims to support Mexico in this endeavour.
The once booming dynamic economies in Asia were drawn into a whirlpool of business failures and economic devastation following the flotation of the Thai baht in July 1997, and the consequent collapse of asset prices and currency depreciations in several East Asian countries. High growth in these emerging market economies had masked important structural weaknesses that eventually triggered the economic slump now referred to as the Asia Crisis. To address the structural measures needed to restore sustained economic growth and stability in the crisis-affected countries, this book brings forth analyses and recommendations on the crisis from internationally respected economists and policy makers and the OECD. Overall, experts conclude that, to deal with the crisis and alleviate social distress, structural reforms of government, business and the financial sector must be undertaken rapidly. Such reforms must be established with a long-term view to protect these and other countries from future crises.
Economic recovery in Asia is a high priority for the OECD. As an international organisation with experience across a broad range of structural issues, it is a unique forum for the exchange of views on national experiences with policy reforms and possible improvements in the functioning of financial markets. In November 1998, the OECD's Centre for Co-operation with Non-Members (CCNM) held the symposium that led to this publication. Experts from OECD Member and non-member economies attended the symposium. This publication assembles their contributions and provides insight into the possible role of the OECD in promoting economic recovery in the region.
Declining fish stocks and expanding fishing fleets have combined with growing competition from aquaculture to put increased pressure on the fishing sector to adjust the size and nature of its operations in many countries. In some fishing communities, almost sixty percent of jobs are linked to fishing and in many coastal areas there are few alternative employment opportunities for fishers. This conference proceedings analyses the social issues and policy challenges that arise from fisheries adjustment policies, and how OECD member countries are meeting those challenges.
Current changes in the structure of population, whether they relate to ageing or the radical modification of social practices, are of the utmost importance. Without dynamic new measures in the sphere of public transport, the private car will continue to be used more and more and what already seem to be insurmountable problems will be aggravated.
Round Table 88 seeks to determine the scale of these changes before analysing the various ways in which public transport can respond.
Structural materials research is a field of growing relevance in the nuclear sector, especially for the different innovative reactor systems being developed within the Generation IV International Forum (GIF), for critical and subcritical transmutation systems, and of interest to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). Under the auspices of the NEA Nuclear Science Committee (NSC) the Workshop on Structural Materials for Innovative Nuclear Systems (SMINS) was organised in collaboration with the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe in Germany. The objectives of the workshop were to exchange information on structural materials research issues and to discuss ongoing programmes, both experimental and in the field of advanced modelling. These proceedings include the papers and the poster session materials presented at the workshop, representing the international state of the art in this domain.
Materials research is a field of growing relevance for innovative nuclear systems, such as Generation IV reactors, critical and sub-critical transmutation systems and fusion devices. For these different systems, structural materials are selected or developed taking into account the pecificities of their foreseen operational environment. Since 2007, the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has begun organising a series of workshops on Structural Materials for Innovative Nuclear Systems (SMINS) in order to provide a forum to exchange information on current materials research programmes for different innovative nuclear systems. These proceedings include the papers of the second workshop (SMINS-2) which was held in Daejon, Republic of Korea on 31 August-3 September 2010, and hosted by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI).