Browse by: "2021"
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As countries weather the COVID-19 health emergency, high-quality connectivity, more than ever, is essential to ensure that economic activities can continue in a remote manner. However, important disparities in terms of connectivity persist, aggravating the consequences of the health emergency. Therefore, policies aiming to reduce connectivity divides are of paramount importance. This report explores policies and regulations in OECD countries that have proven successful to work towards closing connectivity divides. It offers a roadmap to policy makers on the overarching policies and regulatory measures to expand connectivity, as well as the tailored approaches to extend broadband networks in rural and remote areas.
The promotion of widespread, affordable, and high-quality broadband is a prerequisite for the digital transformation of economies and societies. Foreseeing the role of broadband as an accelerator of economic, social and cultural development, the OECD adopted the Council Recommendation on Broadband Development in 2004. Since then, important developments have taken place in broadband technologies and markets. As part of the review of the 2004 Recommendation undertaken from 2018 to 2020 and resulting in the adoption of the revised 2021 OECD Council Recommendation on Broadband Connectivity, this report examines the evolution of broadband technologies, policies and regulation to foster broadband developments since 2004 as well as the benefits of, and challenges to, accelerating these developments to further enable digital transformation and inclusive growth.
This review discusses the significant progress made since the last OECD budget review of Bulgaria in 2009. It begins with a discussion of the institutional and legislative framework for budgeting before addressing fiscal policy and medium-term planning. It then turns to the state budget formulation and execution before discussing transparency and openness in budgeting. It concludes with a discussion of parliament’s role in the budget process and external oversight. Recommendations are made for each of these topics.
This review provides an overview of the budgetary landscape in Thailand and identifies the legal and constitutional aspects that impact on the planning, preparation and reporting of the budget. It then discusses strategic planning elements of the budget, specifically fiscal objectives, medium-term planning, capital investment, the management of fiscal risk in budgets and performance budgeting. It focuses on the development and preparation of the budget, the oversight of the execution of the budget, and the accounting and reporting functions supporting the budget. The final section considers the oversight and accountability of the budget from the perspective that is external to the preparation and decision making of the government. It looks at the role of parliament and independent institutions as well as the transparency, openness and accessibility of the budget. The analysis undertaken in this review is based on the OECD Recommendation of the Council on Budgetary Governance.
Genomic and biobank collaborative platforms hold significant promise for the development of new discoveries and therapies. This paper explores the complex technical, legal and business challenges arising from genomics and biobanks, and brings together ideas and best practices from major national and international platforms, and from a diverse range of experts. The global sharing of biological samples and genomic data has been critical for accelerating our understanding of the biology and spread of COVID-19, and for the development of vaccines and diagnostics. Although some of the policy challenges in the field are well known, they have been reconfigured by the digitalisation of health innovation combined with the increasing complexity and volume of data, the push for global collaboration, and the growing awareness of ethical, legal, and social implications.
Classrooms have become increasingly diverse places where students from various backgrounds share their learning experiences. To promote inclusive school settings for all, building teacher capacity for inclusive teaching represents a key policy area. Education systems need to ensure that teachers are adequately prepared for inclusive teaching and supported throughout their career. Mechanisms to attract and retain a more diverse teaching body as well as to monitor and evaluate teacher preparation and work with respect to diversity and inclusion should also be developed. While teacher policies have increasingly addressed some of these areas, most education systems lack comprehensive capacity-building frameworks for inclusive teaching. This paper maps policies and practices to build teacher capacity for inclusive teaching across OECD countries. It then presents core elements and competences to design and implement inclusive teaching strategies. Finally, the paper reviews some of the evidence available on teacher diversity and interventions for inclusive teaching.
The COVID-19 pandemic risks widening further the divide in labour market outcomes for the most vulnerable groups who face numerous employment obstacles, such as limited work experience, care obligations, low skills or health limitations. Not all these groups show up on the radar of public employment services (PES), which is why it is important to identify the groups at risk and their needs, develop effective outreach strategies, and provide integrated, comprehensive and well-targeted support. This in turn requires a good exchange of information and co-operation between the relevant institutions responsible for the provision of employment, health, education and social services, as well as income support.
Social innovations have proven to be valuable in identifying, designing and implementing new solutions to social and environmental problems. The recent COVID-19 outbreak has put a spotlight on the potential of social innovation as a resilience mechanism, including for local development. This paper presents a preliminary framework for analysing social innovation ecosystems at the local level. It can help policy makers to better understand the different concepts around social innovation, and to develop policies to support social innovation and its implementation. The first section considers the features of social innovation and the benefits it can bring. The second section provides an analytical framework for social innovation at the local level. The final section sets a number of guidelines that support the implementation of social innovation ecosystems at local level, including examples of specific policy instruments.
Following the COVID-19 shock to economies and societies, many countries are renewing infrastructure investment as a stimulus measure. Such investments present an opportunity for governments to address short-term infrastructure challenges through maintenance spending while building resilient and sustainable infrastructure for the future. Infrastructure resilience and maintenance requires a multidimensional approach, considering a range of factors and stakeholders at the local, regional, national and global levels to identify trade-offs among objectives and enable more robust policy choices. Drawing on examples and case studies, this report provides a framework for optimising existing infrastructure assets and building new resilient infrastructure. It also includes strategies for ensuring quality and performance over an asset’s lifecycle.
As education systems face a post-COVID-19 world, we must not lose sight of the importance of teachers’ well-being. Already, prior to the pandemic, teachers were struggling to cope with workload and stress, as shown by the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), one of the first international efforts to capture the well-being of the teaching workforce. Nevertheless, schools and teachers have the tools to improve well-being and reduce stress at the work place.
The goal of this brief is to provide some glimpses into concrete actions that schools and education systems could take to improve teachers’ well-being and job satisfaction.
STRING is a political cross-border organisation spanning five cities (the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Copenhagen, Malmö, Gothenburg and Oslo) and eight regions (Schleswig-Holstein, Region of Southern Denmark, Region Zealand, Capital Region of Denmark, Region Skåne, Region Halland, Västra Götalandsregionen and Viken County) across Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Home to around 14 million inhabitants, STRING has good potential to become a leading European megaregion and an internationally acknowledged Green Hub if governments “think big” and work together beyond their own boundaries. Building on its green expertise and high levels of innovation and quality of life, STRING could take advantage of current opportunities such as the construction of the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link to reap the benefits of agglomeration economies and establish itself as a sustainable megaregion. However, time is of the essence. Seizing the political momentum of the coming decade, including the momentum to support a green recovery from COVID-19, will be critical to advance STRING’s green vision and shape a future-proof economic model.
Increasingly frequent and severe droughts are threatening Italy’s agricultural sector. With climate change forecast to accelerate these trends, the sector must build long-term resilience. This will require better planning and preparing for, absorbing the impact of, and recovering from droughts, as well as more successfully adapting and transforming in response to these events. Recent positive developments include improved data collection on water supplies and agricultural damage and loss from natural hazards to better inform water management and investment decisions; strengthened commitment to ex ante risk management frameworks; and more participatory approaches for water management. Nevertheless, the agricultural policy portfolio currently underemphasises investments in on-farm preparedness and adaptation, in favour of coping tools such as insurance. Further efforts to build agricultural resilience could benefit from a holistic, long-term sectoral risk management strategy; an evaluation of the trade-offs between spending on risk coping tools versus investments in natural hazard preparedness and measures to mitigate their impacts; and more explicit consideration of farmer demographics and capacities in policy design.
Japan is highly exposed to natural hazards, and agricultural producers in Japan have significant experience in managing the risk of natural hazard-induced disasters (NHID). However, recent large-scale typhoons and heavy rain events have highlighted the importance of increasing the sector’s resilience to NHID. A number of current practices build resilience. Disaster risk governance and agricultural policy frameworks are flexible and responsive to evolving NHID risks. Non-structural measures such as hazard maps are increasingly seen as complementary to infrastructure in preventing and mitigating flood risks. Innovative on-farm solutions for mitigating flood risks, such as the paddy field dam, are also increasingly used. Disaster response is rapid, and disaster assistance prioritises helping producers to resume farming. However, agricultural disaster risk management (DRM) must reflect the challenge of more frequent and intense typhoons and heavy rains in the context of ageing and depopulation in rural areas. Public DRM measures should also be complemented by greater efforts from farmers and other stakeholders, such as agricultural co-operatives, to build agricultural resilience to NHID.
New Zealand’s agricultural sector faces the challenge of building long-term resilience to floods, which are projected to increase due to climate change. The New Zealand agricultural sector receives minimal government support and the policy environment focuses on providing an enabling environment for farmers to build their own resilience capacities, while the government has a more direct, but limited, role during disaster response and recovery. Key good practices include an ex ante framework to discipline ex post assistance to agriculture; incentives for industry groups to develop support resources for farmers; and an emphasis on mental wellbeing following a crisis. Nevertheless, further efforts to strengthen resilience could benefit from: (i) improved data collection to support targeted investments in risk prevention and mitigation; (ii) increased public-private collaboration to develop and diffuse effective solutions for adapting to and mitigating the risks of natural hazard-induced disasters on farms, including by leveraging the renewed engagement on extension services; and (iii) greater commitment to ensuring preparedness and response capacities in rural regions.
Turkey is exposed to multiple natural hazard-induced disasters (NHID) and has considerable experience in managing the associated risks. Drought, in particular, has had significant impacts on the country’s agricultural sector, and the frequency of droughts is expected to increase due to climate change. Existing governance and policy frameworks seek to ensure that the agricultural sector is prepared for, and able to respond to, adverse events as they occur. While these mechanisms contribute to improved resilience, further opportunities exist to strengthen policy processes, in particular by increasing farmer and private sector participation.
Agricultural producers in the United States have significant experience in managing the risk of natural hazard-induced disasters (NHID), but the 2019 Midwestern Floods and Hurricane Florence in 2018 highlighted the importance of increasing resilience to extreme floods. A number of current practices already build resilience. Producers can access science-based information on adaptation to climate and weather-related risks, preparedness and recovery, including through the USDA Climate Hubs. Formal networks build relationships and capabilities before a disaster, improving the effectiveness of disaster preparedness and response. USDA conservation programmes and various soil health initiatives help farmers to mitigate the impacts of floods on production. However, most farm support is directed to agricultural risk management policies and disaster assistance that help producers cope with the impacts of NHID. Integrating resilience objectives into these programmes would send a clearer signal to producers about the need to adapt and increase resilience. Policy makers should also engage with trusted stakeholders – including farm organisations and extension agents – to promote the benefits of practices that build resilience to NHID ID.
This work proposes an analysis of the statistical properties and distributional characteristics of Burning Glass Technologies’ (BGT) data on online job openings from platforms and companies, at the occupation level. BGT data are compared to official data on employment by occupation to assess their occupation-specific representativeness. This work further proposes weighting schemes aimed at making BGT-based analysis fully representative at the occupation and country levels, where appropriate.
The analysis encompasses six economies – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States – for the period 2010-19. Overall, it finds that BGT data exhibit good statistical properties and are a useful source of timely information about labour market demand, especially for high-skill occupations and recruitment processes that are more likely to happen online.
This paper reviews issues and trends in business advice policies for business start-ups and existing SMEs, including public support for business consultancy and mentoring. Business advice policies aim to improve the growth, survival and productivity performance of new and small firms by strengthening their strategic management capabilities. The paper examines the rationale for government policies in this field, different policy delivery models, recent policy trends - such as increased use of third party delivery and performance management systems - and evidence on policy impacts. It focuses in particular on three key issues faced by policy makers - how to stimulate demand for business development services from firms and entrepreneurs who could benefit; how to target and segment support provided to different types of firms and entrepreneurs; and how to introduce digital business diagnostic tools into the advice system.
Firm entry has rebounded after the drop experienced during the first COVID-19 lockdowns of early 2020, yet the recovery in entry rates is highly heterogeneous across countries, with possible long-term implications for employment and output growth. Financial support to firms’ liquidity and temporary changes to insolvency procedures have been effective in reducing bankruptcies, on average, by more than 30% relative to the pre-pandemic period. Policy measures may have protected viable and productive firms and avoided the systemic risks posed by a wave of bankruptcies, but at the risk of potentially keeping non-viable (the so-called zombie) firms afloat. Governments should implement a balanced strategy to phase out emergency support policies and pursue a gradual approach focusing on restoring the equity of distressed firms, encouraging timely debt restructuring and improving the efficiency of liquidation procedures, with the aim of fostering resource reallocation.