Browse by: "2017"

The 2013 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Gender Equality in Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship recommends adopting practices that promote gender equality in education, promoting family-friendly policies and working conditions which enable fathers and mothers to balance their working hours and their family responsibilities and facilitate women to participate more in private and public sector employment. It also recommends increasing the representation of women in decision-making position, eliminating the discriminatory gender wage gap, promoting all appropriate measures to end sexual harassment in the workplace, reducing the gender gap in entrepreneurship activity, and paying attention to the special needs of women from disadvantaged minority groups and migrant women.

Over the past ten years economic growth in Asia has contributed to a reduction of poverty as well as fertility rates, and greater prosperity has contributed to gains in life expectancy. However, at present many workers still work in informal employment, frequently for long hours at little pay and without social protection coverage. A growing demand for social support, extending the coverage of social protection benefits and improving the job quality of workers will be among Asia’s major challenges in future. This report considers these challenges, providing policy examples from countries to illustrate good practice, including Bangladesh, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore and Viet Nam.

This publication puts forward a research agenda advocating the importance of market competition, effective market regulation and competition policies for achieving inclusive growth and shared prosperity in emerging and developing economies. It is the result of a global partnership and shared commitment between the World Bank Group and the OECD.

A System of Health Accounts 2011: Revised Edition provides an updated and systematic description of the financial flows related to the consumption of health care goods and services. As demands for information increase and more countries implement and institutionalise health accounts according to the system, the data produced are expected to be more comparable, more detailed and more policy relevant. It builds on the original OECD Manual, published in 2000, and the Guide to Producing National Health Accounts to create a single global framework for producing health expenditure accounts that can help track resource flows from sources to uses. It is the result of a collaborative effort between the OECD, WHO and the European Commission, and sets out in more detail the boundaries, the definitions and the concepts – responding to health care systems around the globe – from the simplest to the more complicated.

Financial reporting is one of the foundations of good fiscal management. High-quality financial reports are essential to ensure that a government’s fiscal decisions are based on the most up-to-date and accurate understanding of its financial position. Financial reports are also the mechanism through which legislatures, auditors, and the public at large hold governments accountable for their financial performance. Over the past two decades, a growing number of governments have begun moving away from pure cash accounting toward accrual accounting to improve transparency and accountability and better inform fiscal decision making. This study reviews and compares accounting and budgeting practices at the national government level in OECD countries. It also discusses both the challenges and benefits of accruals reforms. Finally, it looks at some steps countries are taking to make better use of accrual information in the future. This is a joint publication with the International Federation of Accountants and the OECD.

Despite the increasingly protracted nature of situations of forced displacement, development policy makers and practitioners have tended to overlook the longevity of displacement. Forced displacement has long been viewed primarily as an emergency humanitarian issue by providers of development co-operation and the focus of the international community has predominantly been on addressing the immediate protection and short-term humanitarian needs of forcibly displaced persons. However, with increasing levels of new and protracted displacement, and key commitments such as the 2030 Agenda, donors are looking at the role of development actors and financing in supporting sustainable and comprehensive solutions to forced displacement. This Guidance, therefore, provides a clear and practical introduction to the challenges faced in working in situations of forced displacement, and provides guidance to donor staff seeking to mainstream responses to forced displacement into development planning and co-operation. While recognising that donor policies and responses are constantly evolving, this guidance proposes that donors responding to these situations prioritise three broad areas of work, where they can best contribute to existing capacities at the national, regional and global levels. It also identifies twelve actions, grouped under four key principles, outlining what donors can do to reinforce the capacities of key actors to respond to refugees and Internally Displaced Persons at the national, regional and global levels, and to advance comprehensive solutions.

The cost estimation process of decommissioning nuclear facilities has continued to evolve in recent years, with a general trend towards demonstrating greater levels of detail in the estimate and more explicit consideration of uncertainties, the latter of which may have an impact on decommissioning project costs. The 2012 report on the International Structure for Decommissioning Costing (ISDC) of Nuclear Installations, a joint recommendation by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the European Commission, proposes a standardised structure of cost items for decommissioning projects that can be used either directly for the production of cost estimates or for mapping of cost items for benchmarking purposes. The ISDC, however, provides only limited guidance on the treatment of uncertainty when preparing cost estimates. Addressing Uncertainties in Cost Estimates for Decommissioning Nuclear Facilities, prepared jointly by the NEA and IAEA, is intended to complement the ISDC, assisting cost estimators and reviewers in systematically addressing uncertainties in decommissioning cost estimates. Based on experiences gained in participating countries and projects, the report describes how uncertainty and risks can be analysed and incorporated in decommissioning cost estimates, while presenting the outcomes in a transparent manner.

Ageing of hazardous installations has been the subject of increasing attention in the past decade, both by public authorities and industry. Indeed, worldwide, and in particular across OECD countries, many of the currently operating chemical facilities have reached or exceeded the end of their nominal design life which is typically set at 20 to 25 years. Many of these facilities were built in the post Second World War period and in 2016 facilities can now be up to 75 years old and still in service. This raises questions as to how best to manage these older facilities, and how to anticipate ageing in newer ones. In 2013, the OECD Working Group on Chemical Accidents initiated a project on Ageing of Hazardous Installations, the objective of which was to get a better understanding of what ageing is and its implications. The project sought to identify the risk factors associated with ageing facilities, establish whether ageing is a cause of accidents, and discover how ageing is being approached by public authorities and whether ageing is addressed as a specific subject in policy and regulations. The results of the activities conducted within the framework of this project are presented in this report.

Costa Rica’s strong agricultural sector is underpinned by the country’s political stability, robust economic growth and high levels of human development.  The sector has achieved significant export success, yet raising productivity and staying competitive in world markets will require efforts to address bottlenecks in infrastructure, innovation and access to financial services.  Maximising Costa Rica’s comparative advantage in higher-value niche products will depend upon more efficient services to agriculture, including better implementation of programmes, improved co-ordination among institutions, and reduced bureaucracy. While overall protection for agriculture is relatively low compared to OECD countries, it is nonetheless highly distorting to production and trade. Managing the transition to scheduled liberalisation presents an opportunity to reform costly policies, and to implement an alternative policy package with new investments in innovation, productivity and diversification, supported by transition assistance where needed. Costa Rican agriculture’s vulnerability to extreme weather events is expected to worsen with climate change, and even while the country is among global leaders in environmental protection, sustainable development and climate change mitigation, further adaptation efforts will be necessary.

This report analyses Philippine agricultural policy. Agriculture provides 30% of total employment in the Philippines and represents 11% of its Gross Domestic Product. The Philippines has had notable recent overall economic success, yet improving agricultural performance remains challenging. Productivity growth lags behind other Southeast Asian countries, and a number of policy distortions hinder progress. With agricultural land resources also under pressure from frequent natural disasters, rising population and urbanisation, the report offers a series of recommendations to improve the sector’s performance and its ability to adapt to climate change.

This document contains progress update and assessment of the implementation of recommendations from the Fourth Round of Monitoring of the Istanbul Anti-Corruption Action Plan for Kazakhstan and was adopted in July 2018.

Tajikistan has been focusing on monitoring of the implementation of the existing Anticorruption Strategy 2013-2020 and the Action Plan for its implementation. The Agency for State Financial Control and Fight against Corruption, which is responsible for monitoring, has taken certain steps to strengthen this monitoring mechanism such as introducing more frequent, annual monitoring instead of biennial, and administrative liability for failure to implement measures under government anticorruption programs and their implementation plans. However, it is noted in the Report that generally, the monitoring, as well as the implementation of the abovementioned anticorruption policy documents, need to be more thoroughly improved with emphasis on quality and analytical content.

This review analyses the monitoring and evaluation system of Colombia's Online Government Strategy and provides recommendations for developing an impact assessment methodology for digital government. It looks at the background, evolution and current status of the Strategy, and draws insights from the first implementation of a transitional methodology. The findings will help Colombia build the tools and capacities needed to effectively and sustainably implement its digital government strategy.

This report looks at the state of health in Austria.

“Behavioural insights”, or insights derived from the behavioural and social sciences, including decision making, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, organisational and group behaviour, are being applied by governments with the aim of making public policies work better. As their use has become more widespread, however, questions are being raised about their effectiveness as well as their philosophical underpinnings. This report discusses the use and reach of behavioural insights, drawing on a comprehensive collection of over 100 applications across the world and policy sectors, including consumer protection, education, energy, environment, finance, health and safety, labour market policies, public service delivery, taxes and telecommunications. It suggests ways to ensure that this experimental approach can be successfully and sustainably used as a public policy tool.

This report looks at the state of health in Belgium.