Browse by: "2010"

Les évolutions urbanistiques, démographiques, et même climatiques, ont un impact sur les questions auxquelles doivent répondre les pays de l’OCDE en matière de protection de la vie et du bien-être des citoyens ou de garantie de la continuité de l’activité économique. En France les plus grands risques naturels connus concernent les inondations. Alors que plusieurs politiques publiques sur la gestion des risques d’inondation sont adoptées, celles-ci sont mises en œuvre à différents niveaux administratifs. Dans cette étude de cas, le Programme de l'OCDE sur l’avenir analyse une gestion intégrée dans le bassin de la Loire et examine les défis rencontrés. Au nombre des questions les plus cruciales figurent la concertation des parties-prenantes, l’investissement dans l’entretien des digues et le changement climatique.

Le Projet de l’OCDE sur l’avenir portant sur les politiques de gestion des risques identifie les principales difficultés de la gestion des risques au XXIe siècle et propose des solutions. Le projet met l’accent sur la cohérence des politiques de gestion des risques et sur leur capacité à faire face aux risques systémiques. Il couvre un vaste éventail de questions liées à la gestion des risques et s’attache à trois grandes thématiques : les catastrophes naturelles, les risques pour les infrastructures critiques et la protection de groupes sociaux particulièrement vulnérables.

 

“Too much ‘red tape’!” is one of the most common complaints from businesses and citizens in OECD countries. Administrative simplification is a regulatory quality tool to review and reduce administrative and regulatory procedures. It has remained high on the agenda in most OECD countries over the last decade and continues to be so. Countries’ efforts to strengthen their competitiveness, productivity and entrepreneurship during the current recession have made simplification efforts even more urgent.  

Until now, efforts to reduce administrative burdens have primarily been driven by ambitions to improve the cost efficiency of administrative regulations, as these impose direct and indirect costs on regulated subjects. Many countries will finish their current projects over the next few years and must decide how to continue their efforts and how to make them more efficient.  

This report looks beyond 2010 and presents policy options for administrative simplification that are in line with current trends and developments. It provides policy makers with guidance on the available tools and explains common mistakes to be avoided when designing, undertaking and evaluating administrative simplification programmes.

Well-timed and targeted innovation boosts productivity, increases economic growth and helps solve societal problems. But how can governments encourage more people to innovate more of the time? And how can government itself be more innovative?

The OECD Innovation Strategy provides a set of principles for fostering innovation in people (workers and consumers), in firms and in government. It takes an in-depth look at the scope of innovation and how it is changing, as well as where and how it is occurring. The result is the formulation of far-reaching policies for innovation using recent research and data.

"a thoughtful new report on how governments can do better at spurring and measuring innovation." The Economist

In all OECD countries, governments collect revenues through taxes and redistribute this public money, often by obligatory spending on social programmes such as education or health care. Their tax systems usually include “tax expenditures” – provisions that allow certain groups of people, such as small businessmen, retired people or working mothers, or those who have undertaken certain activities, such as charitable donations, to pay less in taxes.

The use of tax expenditures by governments is pervasive and growing. At a time when many government budgets are threatened by population ageing and adverse cyclical developments, there is a pressing need to avoid inefficient government programmes, some of which may utilise tax expenditures.

This book sheds light on the use of tax expenditures, mainly through a study of ten OECD countries: Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. This book will help government officials and the public better understand some of the technical and policy issues behind the use of tax expenditures. It highlights key trends and successful practices, and addresses a broad range of government finance issues, including tax policy making, tax and budget efficiency, fiscal responsibility and rule making.

This publication reviews measures taken to support investment policy and governance reforms in Iraq.  It finds that Iraqi parliamentary elections, held without major security incidents in March 2010, are the latest in a series of indicators suggesting that the country may be achieving greater stability in governance and security - a key prerequisite for foreign and domestic investment, growth and job creation. Furthermore, the business environment is gradually improving as a result of an ongoing institutional capacity building process supported by the international community.

The MENA-OECD Initiative on Governance and Investment for Development is part of this effort, playing a key role in building the capacity of the National Investment Commission and its one-stop shop for investment licensing. The Initiative has helped raise awareness on corruption and bribery issues, provided training for the negotiators of international agreements, and advised on implementing regulations for the landmark Investment Law of 2006. This publication examines these issues, and MENA-OECD involvement in advancing them, for the period 2007-2008.

The service sector, in aggregate, now dominates total employment and value-added in OECD countries, accounting for more than 70% of these two measures, and continues to increase in importance. While services may play a slightly smaller role in rural regions than in urban areas, they are the dominant component of the rural economy. It is clear that a vibrant service sector is both vital for a prosperous local economy and crucial for meeting the needs of rural citizens. 

This book provides an overview of the underlying problems in delivering services to rural regions.  It contains a conceptual structure for thinking about rural service delivery problems and a strategy for thinking about the role of government in service delivery, as well as a discussion of the role that innovation and public management tools like co-design and co-delivery can play in designing better service delivery approaches.  Also included are examples of different, successful policy strategies drawn from OECD countries.

 

Also available

The New Rural Paradigm: Policies and Governance (2006)

OECD Rural Policy Reviews: Germany (2007)

OECD Rural Policy Reviews: Mexico (2007)

OECD Rural Policy Reviews: Finland (2008)

OECD Rural Policy Reviews: The Netherlands (2008)

OECD Rural Policy Reviews: China (2009)

OECD Rural Policy Reviews: Italy (2009)

OECD Rural Policy Reviews: Spain (2009)  

OECD Rural Policy Reviews: Québec, Canada (forthcoming)

 

We expect governments to protect citizens from the adverse consequences of hazardous events. At the same time it is not possible or necessarily in the best interest of citizens for all risks to be removed. A risk-based approach to the design and implementation of regulation can help to ensure that regulatory approaches are efficient, effective and account for risk/risk tradeoffs across policy objectives. Risk-based approaches to the design of regulation and compliance strategies can improve the welfare of citizens by providing better protection, more efficient government services and reduced costs for business. Across the OECD there is great potential to improve the operation of risk policy as few governments have taken steps to develop a coherent risk governance policy for managing regulation.  

This publication presents recent OECD research and analysis on risk and regulatory policy.  The chapters discuss core challenges today. They offer measures for developing, or improving, coherent risk governance policies. Topics include: challenges in designing regulatory policy frameworks to manage risks; different cultural and legal dimensions of risk regulatory concepts across OECD; analytical models and principles for decision making in uncertain situations; key elements of risk regulation and governance institutions; the use of management-based regulation to help firms make risk-related behavioural changes; an analysis of the risk-based frameworks of regulators in five OECD countries (Australia, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, United Kingdom) and across four sectors: environment, food safety, financial markets and health and safety; and the elements for designing formal guidelines for risk prioritisation, assessment, management and communication.

 

Public administration has entered a new age. In the 1980s, “less” government was the prevailing idea; in the 1990s and early 21^st century, “New Public Management” was the dominant theme. Today, public administration is moving in new directions. Reforms are focusing on the quality of services for citizens and businesses and on the efficiency of administration (the “back office” of government). The OECD is studying these new trends in a multi-annual, cross-country project called “Value for Money in Government”.

This is the first report in a new OECD series on the topic. The book examines four themes in nine OECD countries: the development of shared service centres, the steering and control of agencies, automatic productivity cuts, and spending review procedures. In addition, it contains a quantitative analysis of the size of employment in central government. The countries studied are Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The book pays particular attention to the case of the Netherlands, the country that first proposed an OECD study on value for money in government.

The MENA-OECD Governance Programme supports public sector reform in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. Since its inception in 2003, the programme has helped the region to improve institutions for good governance through continuous policy review and reform.

The need to accelerate economic growth has been the primary impetus, but MENA governments are increasingly implementing reform to improve public sector performance and to meet citizens’ needs for higher quality education and health care, a safer and cleaner environment, and transparent and responsive government. Going forward, reforms will also be driven by equity and sustainability concerns.

This report offers a perspective on the progress made in public management in the MENA region since 2005. It reviews achievements in implementing public governance reform in nine areas: human resource management, public finance, integrity, regulation and law drafting, administrative simplification, e-government, public-private partnerships, gender, and water resource management. The report presents case studies on key policy reforms and outlines common characteristics across the region as well as the specific conditions and circumstances in MENA countries and economies.

The movement of personnel between employment in the public and private sectors, referred to as the “revolving door” phenomenon, raises particular attention in the context of the response of governments to the financial and economic crisis. 

This OECD survey of 30 member countries shows that the vast majority of countries have established basic standards for preventing post-public employment conflict of interest. But few have tailored these standards to address risk areas and professions such as regulators or public procurement officials. Enforcing standards and imposing suitable sanctions remains a challenge for many countries.

The principles presented in this volume serve as a point of reference for policy makers and managers to review and modernise post-public employment policies. It is part of the pathfinding efforts of the OECD to promote public sector integrity for cleaner, fairer and stronger economies.

Shifting Wealth is the first edition of Perspectives on Global Development, a new publication from the OECD Development Centre.

Shifting Wealth examines the changing dynamics of the global economy over the last 20 years, and in particular the impact of the economic rise of large developing countries, such as China and India, on the poor. It details new patterns in assets and flows within the global economy and highlights the strengthening of “South-South” links – the increasing interactions between developing countries through trade, aid and foreign direct investment.

What do these changes imply for development and development policy? The report explores potential policy responses at both national and international levels. Nationally, developing countries' need to re-position their development strategies to capitalise on the increasing potential of South-South co-operation and to fully benefit from new macroeconomic drivers. Internationally, the global governance architecture needs to adjust to better reflect current economic weights.

“OECD Perspectives on Global Development is a very welcome new publication that contributes to investigating the permanent structural breaks with the past now occurring in the global economy. It documents the need to address new challenges in development finance and social development.” -- Justin Yifu Lin, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, The World Bank

"Perspectives on Global Development is a landmark report about the biggest economic story of our era. It describes and analyses the new economic world we live in, where countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America provide the dynamism for future growth. It shows how this shift in the economic centre of gravity is cause for optimism, rather than consternation."  --Alan Hirsch, Deputy Director General: Policy, South African Presidency

"Based on the irrefutable fact that some developing economies have grown very rapidly in recent decades, some of this study’s analytical and policy conclusions will undoubtedly contribute to important debates as the world strives to draw appropriate lessons from the varied experiences of the last two decades, and especially the last two years." --Jomo Kwame Sundaram, UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development

"In this volume, the OECD Development Centre lays bare a new era of economic development. But in doing so, it poses the big questions of sustainability – namely, what development means for the social, political, and economic fabric of an increasingly globalised world." --Stephen S. Roach, Chairman‪, Morgan Stanley Asia

 

Governments are seeking to channel research funds into universities and other institutions in ways that support high-quality research in strategically important areas and bolster effective knowledge diffusion. These issues of steering and funding have even more relevance in light of the current  financial crisis and economic downturn which have seen severe fiscal pressures fall on many countries.

This publication presents a collection of papers presented at an OECD workshop on performance-based funding of public research in tertiary education institutions. It takes stock of current thinking and practice around performance-based funding of public research in tertiary education institutions, as a tool to help governments meet their research goals. These funding models are essentially systems of ex-post evaluation of research outputs and outcomes from universities and other tertiary institutions, and are generally based on peer review, bibliometric or other quantitative indicators. Their results are used to inform government decisions about how much and which institutions to fund.

This Review of Venice, Italy, offers a comprehensive assessment of the city-region’s economy and the extent to which its land use, labour market and environmental policies embrace a metropolitan vision. A new understanding of the provinces of Padua, Treviso and Venice as an interconnected city-region of 2.6 million people guides this study. Venice ranks as among the most dynamic and productive city-regions in the OECD, with high employment levels and growth rates. Though it has thrived on a model of small firms and industrial clusters, it is undergoing a deep economic transformation. Venice confronts growing environmental challenges as a result of rising traffic congestion and costly infrastructure pressures, exacerbated by sprawl. Demographics are also changing, due to ageing inhabitants, immigrant settlement and the rapid depopulation of the historic city of Venice.  

This report offers a comparative analysis of these issues, utilising the OECD’s metropolitan database to benchmark productivity and growth. It draws on regional economics, urban planning, transportation studies and hydrology to throw light on the changes within the city-region. In light of planned inter-city rail extensions, the Review calls for programmes to increase economic synergies between Venice and its neighbours. It evaluates key tools for promoting economic growth and metropolitan governance and proposes enhanced co-ordination of land use policies, additional business development services for small and medium-sized businesses, and the enlargement of university-linked innovation. Given frequent flooding, the report appraises the quality of metropolitan water governance and Venice’s potential to become a powerful reference for climate change adaptation.

OECD's Territorial Review of Toronto, Canada.  It finds that the Toronto region is one of the chief economic powerhouses of Canada, generating almost one-fifth of national GDP and 45% of Ontario’s GDP. The region is home to 40% of Canada’s business headquarters and is a main manufacturing hub, with major automotive, biomedical and electronics companies. Toronto is also one of the most diverse metropolitan regions in the world: half of its population is foreign born and it hosted 40% of all immigrants to Canada during 2001-2006.

Nevertheless, the region’s current economic development model is under pressure and its economic performance has been mixed in recent years. From 1995 to 2005, GDP per capita and GDP growth rates were below the Canadian average while its annual economic and labour productivity growth were lower than the average for OECD metropolitan regions. During this period, population growth boosted demand in the construction, sales and retail, professional and financial services sectors. However, the recent decline in the area’s manufacturing jobs has illustrated the structural difficulties of some traditionally strong areas, such as the automotive and electronics industries.

This Review proposes a new sustainable competitiveness agenda to enhance productivity, focusing on innovation, cultural diversity and infrastructure, as well as on green policies. To implement such an agenda, the Review proposes improving the current governance framework by intensifying strategic planning at the level of the Toronto region.

Located on the southern coast of China, Guangdong is the country’s most populous and rich province. It has 95.4 million inhabitants and provides one-eighth of the national GDP. A key development feature of Guangdong has been “processing trade”, which has allowed companies to profit from importing materials, assembling goods and exporting them via Hong Kong, China.

The recent economic crisis has had a strong impact on the province, although Guangdong also faces in-depth structural problems. Growing labour costs and strain on land availability have increasingly challenged the province’s traditional model of development, as have new competitors in China and abroad. Meanwhile, regional disparities within the province have increased, with a high concentration of economic activities and foreign direct investment in the Pearl River Delta area, an agglomeration of nine prefectures of 47.7 million inhabitants that represents 79.4% of the province’s total GDP.

This review assesses Guangdong’s current approach to economic development. The province is focusing on industrial policies primarily aimed at heavy manufacturing industries (e.g. automobile, shipbuilding, petrochemicals) and supported by investment in hard infrastructure transport projects and energy supply, along with the implementation of the “Double Relocation” policies intended to move lower value-added factories to lagging regions through incentive mechanisms like industrial parks.

The review discusses how some principles of the OECD regional paradigm could help Guangdong. It also addresses the huge environmental challenges that the province is facing and explores the opportunity for developing a green growth strategy. Strategies to improve Guangdong’s governance are analysed as well, with particular attention paid to co-ordination issues within the Pearl River Delta.

The Territorial Review of Guangdong is integrated into a series of thematic reviews on regions undertaken by the OECD Territorial Development Policy Committee. The overall aim of these case studies is to draw and disseminate horizontal policy recommendations for regional and national governments.

 

 

OECD's review of rural policy in Quebec.  It finds that in rural Québec, both population and personal income are growing, on average, and the province’s economic base continues to diversify. Land occupancy is more homogenous than in the rest of Canada, due to the presence of denser networks of small and medium-sized communities. However, mirroring the situation at the national level, the province displays large regional disparities. The sustainability of some rural communities, especially if remote and resource-based, is challenged by demographic and economic decline. In this context, Québec has developed one of the most advanced rural policy approaches in the OECD, closely in line with the framework suggested in the OECD’s New Rural Paradigm. The province’s rural policy does not have a sectoral focus, and aims at community empowerment and land occupancy.  

To maximize returns on its rural policy investments, Québec needs to integrate social development more strongly with economic and entrepreneurial development, and further strengthen the supra-local level of government as the centre for rural and territorial development strategies. This should be combined with stabilisation measures in lagging areas, through the accumulation of human capital and enhanced access to land in predominantly rural territories. To address environmental challenges, natural resources should be protected both in the outskirts of metropolitan zones and in remote areas.  

This OECD review of risk management policies focuses on the Italian civil protection system and its means to prepare for and react to earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, landslides and even volcanoes. The Italian National Civil Protection Service can rapidly mobilise operational resources for emergency management and recovery both at home, throughout Europe and around the world. Its components constantly research known hazards to better understand and model vulnerabilities, while technical experts co-operate in real time to monitor events as they unfold and operate the early warning systems. These professionals are supported by a highly organised and motivated volunteer service unseen elsewhere in OECD countries. What makes these many parts of the civil protection system work as one effective whole, however, is its governance structure under the direct authority of the Italian Prime Minister.  

Recent years have seen a steep increase in the frequency and economic impacts of disasters, and Italy has been no exception. In addition to increased seasonal variance linked to climate change, the devastating earthquakes around L’Aquilla in 2009 make Italy a case study for policy-makers, emergency management practitioners, academics and international organisations who are searching for solutions, notably in the areas of disaster damage reduction policies. The Italian civil protection system offers a rich source of best practices for their consideration. The National Department of Civil Protection in particular, as the hub of the National Civil Protection Service, provides a model of professionalism and leadership. The review report also identifies many challenges facing the Italian civil protection system and areas where improvements are still needed.

This review presents a general picture of the overall regulatory reform frameworks in Italy, examining quality regulation, competition policy and professional services. The review also offers a special focus on multi-level governance, where key issues include local public services, commercial distribution, local transport and energy.

The review finds that Italy has made significant progress using regulatory reform since the first OECD review in 2001. Administrative simplification and the increasing role of competition policy, combined with devolution of state powers to regions, have helped. But there are still key challenges for regulatory policy and its implementation, including enforcement, capacity in the civil service, impact analysis for evidence-based decision-making, and building a culture of consultation. The current global economic crisis is an opportunity for Italy to further clarify how the state intervenes in the economy, to improve multi-level co-ordination, and to expand competition in specific sectors.

This review of regulatory reform in Australia comes at the right time to capture the attention of the OECD community. Australia has successfully weathered the worst effects of the current economic crisis. The resilience of the Australian economy, in the face of the deepest and most widespread recession in over fifty years in OECD countries, can in part be attributed to Australia’s current and past regulatory reforms. 

Australia has built strong governance foundations for the development of good regulatory management and competition policies, which are likely to be conducive to economic growth. It aims to reinvigorate a wide agenda of national reforms and to embed past reform achievements in new working arrangements between the Commonwealth and the States. This reform agenda is likely to yield substantial economic benefits for years to come, but demands joint participation and commitment from both the Commonwealth and all States. Maintaining the momentum for reform is a critical challenge, which requires a strategic vision as well as strenuous efforts to promote change and to establish a culture of continuous regulatory improvement.

Australia is one of many OECD countries to request a broad review by the OECD of its regulatory practices and reforms. This review presents a general picture , set within a macroeconomic context, of regulatory achievements and challenges, including regulatory quality at the Commonwealth level as well as across levels of government, competition policy and market openness. It also provides a special focus on Commonwealth-state relationships.

This review of regional innovation assesses how to improve Catalonia's current strategy and actions in order to boost its innovation system through both its own programmes and those of Spain and the European Union.

It finds that with over seven million inhabitants and a GDP of around EUR 204 billion, Catalonia is not only an important region within Spain, but within the OECD as well. Indeed, its economic output is similar to countries like Portugal and Norway. The region experienced massive population growth over the past decade, due to immigration, which in part drove GDP growth. However, Catalonia’s productivity is slipping, relative to other OECD regions, necessitating the transition to a productivity-driven growth model through a stronger regional innovation system. The region has successfully strengthened its research base, with investments in R&D having increased four-fold over the past decade. Catalonia is now mobilising actors across the innovation system in regional centres, such as Barcelona, to improve productivity and address social challenges.