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Complex policy issues cannot be solved by government alone. Delivering high-quality public services at the least cost and achieving shared public policy goals requires innovative approaches and greater involvement of citizens. This book is a valuable source of information on government performance in fostering open and inclusive policy making in 25 countries. It offers rich insights into current practice through 14 in-depth country case studies and 18 opinion pieces from leading civil society and government practitioners. It includes 10 guiding principles to support open and inclusive policy making and service delivery in practice.
“Including more people, earlier and more creatively, in public policy issues is vital not just to secure legitimacy for policy decisions, but also to unlock a mass of creativity and commitment. Innovation is increasingly going to become an open, social and networked activity. That is true in politics and policy as much as in business. This timely, thoughtful book will help make open innovation in public policy a practical reality.”
-Charles Leadbeater, author We-think: Mass innovation not mass production
“We cannot engage the public only on issues of service delivery, but need also to seek their views, energy and resources when shaping public policy. To do otherwise is to create a false distinction between design and delivery, when in the citizens’ eyes it is all connected.”
-Irma Pavliniè Krebs, Minister of Public Administration, the Republic of Slovenia
“Focus on Citizens shines a light on the practical difficulties and significant benefits of open and inclusive policy making – not only for OECD member country governments but equally for non-member countries.”
-Bart W. Édes, Head, NGO and Civil Society Center, Asian Development Bank
In today’s economic context, governments are required to take centre stage, helping workers to compete in the global market whilst also supporting employers so that they may retain jobs, increase productivity and offer better-quality employment at the local level. This book provides a new indicator for benchmarking labour-market policy, reviewing the flexibility available in its management throughout OECD countries. The research offers new evidence of the link between flexibility and employment outcomes. Concrete examples of how localities can harness greater flexibility to generate better economic and social outcomes are provided. The new style of management recommended in this book will be key to any national strategy for returning economies to prosperity.
In most IEA Member countries, natural gas demand varies strongly during the year, according to temperature. Flexibility is needed to cover seasonal swings and variations in gas demand, especially for household customers. This book analyses how new flexibility tools and mechanisms are developing with market liberalisation and with the evolution of supply and demand trends. It highlights differences in flexibility requirements and provisions among IEA Member countries.
The quality of corporate governance regulations matters. If they are well designed, they can help governments achieve important policy objectives, such as higher levels of investment, increased productivity and better business sector dynamics. But for this to happen, the rules and regulations must be allowed to evolve over time. They must also be able to meet the many different needs of those entrepreneurs, investors and stakeholders who are supposed to implement them.
This is why the G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance state that policy makers have a responsibility to shape a regulatory framework that can meet the needs of corporations that operate under widely different circumstances.
Importantly, this concept of flexibility and proportionality is not about less demanding rules or the acceptance of sub-standard practices. On the contrary, it represents a functional and outcome oriented approach to regulation that facilitates implementation and makes enforcement more effective.
This OECD report presents the results of an OECD review on flexibility and proportionality practices in seven different areas of corporate governance regulation. The review covers 39 jurisdictions and six in-depth country case studies.
Recent years have seen a remarkable backlash against globalisation. The costs of increased openness and connectivity – including the consequences of trade and investment liberalisation – are weighted as never before against the benefits, with many voices advocating a slowdown or even a reversal of the global integration that has characterised the past three decades. While there are many economic, social and political reasons for this backlash, there is sufficient evidence showing that globalisation is leaving many people behind, particularly in the lower half of the income distribution, and especially in advanced countries. This backlash suggests that we need to act quickly to fix globalisation and make sure that its benefits are more equally shared. The consequences of a potential reversal of global integration could be dramatic: increased protectionism resulting in a net loss of wealth and opportunities and dangerous inward-looking policies that would put at risk many of the benefits achieved in the past decades.
Countries around the world continue to implement safety improvements and corrective actions based on lessons learnt from the 11 March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This report provides a high-level summary and update on these activities, and outlines further lessons learnt and challenges identified for future consideration. It focuses on actions taken by NEA committees and NEA member countries, and as such is complementary to reports produced by other international organisations.
A series of reviews of mental health and work policies in selected OECD countries revealed the challenge of mental health for social and labour market outcomes and policies and the high costs of the continued stigmatisation of mental health for individuals, employers and societies. To better respond to this challenge, in early 2016 health and employment ministers from the 38 OECD countries endorsed a Recommendation of the Council on Integrated Mental Health, Skills, and Work Policy. The Recommendation asked for a holistic mental-health-in-all-policies approach, with particular attention to a timely and integrated delivery of services and the involvement of frontline actors.
Five years later, it is time to assess progress achieved in the policy areas covered by the Recommendation (health policy, youth policy, workplace policy, and welfare policy). This report complements a legal document prepared by the OECD on the implementation of the Recommendation five years after its adoption, and adds quantitative evidence to it as well as considerations about the implications of the experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic on future versions of the Recommendation. Policy is in flux in most countries but much more will have to be done to implement the principles and fulfil the promises of the Recommendation.
The costs of mental ill-health for individuals, employers and society at large are enormous. Mental illness is responsible for a very significant loss of potential labour supply, high rates of unemployment, and a high incidence of sickness absence and reduced productivity at work. Following an introductory report (Sick on the Job: Myths and Realities about Mental Health and Work) and nine country reports, this final synthesis report summarizes the findings from the participating countries and makes the case for a stronger policy response.
During irradiation, nuclear fuel changes volume, primarily through swelling. This swelling is caused by the fission products and in particular by the volatile ones such as krypton and xenon, called fission gas. Fission gas behaviour needs to be reliably predicted in order to make better use of nuclear fuel, a factor which can help to achieve the economic competitiveness required by today's markets. These proceedings communicate the results of an international seminar which reviewed recent progress in the field of fission gas behaviour in light water reactor fuel and sought to improve the models used in computer codes predicting fission gas release. State-of-the-art knowledge is presented for both uranium-oxide and mixed-oxide fuels loaded in water reactors.
This publication highlights the main conclusions of the Fishing for Development joint meeting, held in Paris in April 2014. The meeting was organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank (WB) to initiate a dialogue between the fisheries and development policy communities from member and partner countries and organizations of the OECD. It brought together delegates to the OECD Fisheries Committee and OECD Development Assistance Committee, representatives of partner developing countries invited by FAO, as well as experts and representatives from FAO, WB, non-governmental organizations and regional organizations. The meeting focused on issues central to promoting sustainable fisheries and aquaculture in developing, emerging and developed countries alike.
This publication also includes the background papers originally prepared to provide context for the issues addressed. It identifies questions for a future work agenda on policy coherence in fisheries and aquaculture, and makes evident the strong need for further dialogue between the fisheries and development communities at global and regional scales.
The Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC) and the OECD Fisheries Division are working with regional organisations to help them address the question of policy coherence. This book provides not only an analytical framework adapted to the local context, but also an action framework based on the facts and realities in the field in order to improve the coherence of fisheries policies.
Some 500 million USD are spent annually on fisheries development projects. But fisheries access agreements and trade policies are sometimes applied in ways that dampen developing countries' ability to benefit fully from their rich marine resources. Also, many development projects do not pay sufficient regard to the sustainability issues that are a key for the future of the fishing sector. This publication, a compilation of papers from the Workshop on Policy Coherence for Development in Fisheries, addresses these issues.
For OECD and non-OECD countries alike, the global fisheries situation poses topical questions of coherence between development and fisheries in a number of policy areas. This publication examines these questions and proposes a framework for in-depth analysis of coherence issues in five main policy areas where fisheries and development policies interact, namely environmental, technology, economic, social, and governance policies. The framework is illustrated with ten concrete country and regional case studies, analysing issues that range from international fishing agreements and the relationship between industrial and artisanal fishing fleets to fisheries trade and development policies, as well as fisheries development and poverty reduction.
Concerns about sustainability and the effectiveness of fisheries management on the part of the public have resulted in demand from NGOs, retailers and consumers for assurances that the food they purchase has been sustainably produced. This has led to a number of private entities responding to this demand by establishing eco-labels and certification schemes that claim to provide credible information to the consumer. These labels intend to serve the interest of fishers and processors who need to transmit positive information to the consumer to maintain their markets, and serve consumers by providing information not elsewhere available.
This report considers the growing trend in information requirements for seafood products in general, and in particular to the distinct sustainability features of wild capture fisheries and aquaculture. This work refers primarily to privately-driven certification schemes which have become an established feature of the market for eco-labels in fisheries and aquaculture. The report focuses on private eco-labelling and analyzes the economics of certification schemes, discusses key issues at the interface between public authorities, private labelling schemes, business operators and consumers. Finally, main findings and messages to policy makers are addressed.
Much has been done over the years to improve fisheries management in OECD countries. Ongoing problems of over-fishing, overcapacity and the economic crisis intensify the need for reform. Although there is a general consensus on the importance of a successful fisheries management, the effort levels and effectiveness of policy reforms have differed among OECD countries. This study examines the factors that facilitate reform, as well as the difficulties countries face in the process of reform. It provides an overview of domestic reform experiences in Norway, Mexico, Iceland, New Zealand and Korea.
The fish on your plate may have been caught by a high-tech trawler, trapped by a lone fisher, farmed along with tons of others, or even stolen by pirates. It may have been captured in the South Atlantic, landed in Europe, and processed in China. Globalisation, North-South relations, changing attitudes and lifestyles, and the way we manage natural resources all influence fisheries.
This book uses the expertise of the OECD to assess these issues, and describes the challenges facing those who work in the industry. Apart from the fishers themselves and their families, it also draws on the points of view of NGOs, government specialists, scientists and independent experts.
This book includes StatLinks, URLs under graphs and tables linking to Excel® spreadsheets showing the underlying data
"We at International Aquafeed would recommend this to anyone involved in marine fishing and even to those in aquaculture to and aqua policy development as a foundation document for future decision-making. Well done Patrick Love."
-The Aquaculturists Blog
This document presents a review of fish toxicity testing for the regulatory purpose of chemical safety. The main focus is on fish toxicity, but fish bioaccumulation is also considered where relevant. A review of regulatory needs for fish tests under various jurisdictions in OECD countries is provided in Chapter 2, followed by a review of statistical issues and general test considerations in Chapters 3 and 4, respectively. The document examines animal welfare concerns and alternatives to fish tests in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 provides a systematic review of existing and draft OECD Guidelines which use fish for toxicity or bioaccumulation studies. Finally Chapter 7 describes a generic framework for assessing the environmental hazards of chemicals using fish tests in the most efficient way. An Annex contains conclusions and recommendations made and agreed at the workshop in September 2010. The recommendations concern, among other aspects, possible improvements to existing Test Guidelines, development of guidance on specific issues, harmonisation of existing Test Guidelines for common issues, development of new Test Guidelines, and proposals for deletion of outdated Test Guidelines.
This book gathers the proceedings of an OECD Workshop that took place in April 2004 in Paris, on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing -- a worldwide problem which is increasing in scale. The aim of the workshop was to better understand the social and economic factors that drive IUU fishing in order to identify more effective methods to combat this evil and propose new ways to deal with it.
Finding sufficient funds to pay for more resilient health systems is challenging in the current economic context. COVID-19 has shown the need for additional targeted spending on public health interventions, the digital transformation of health systems, and bolstering the health workforce. Rising incomes, technological innovation and changing demographics put further upward pressure on health spending. This could result in health spending reaching 11.8% of GDP across OECD counties by 2040.
This publication explores the policy options to finance more resilient health systems whilst maintaining fiscal sustainability. It finds that the scale of the additional health financing needs requires ambitious and transformative policy changes. Robust actions to encourage healthier populations and policies to reduce ineffective spending can put future health expenditure on a far gentler upward trajectory. These would enable spending to reach a more sustainable 10.6% of GDP in 2040.
Better budgetary governance is critical. It improves how public funds for health are determined, executed and evaluated. Therefore, a focus of this report is on how good budgeting practices can increase the efficiency of current public spending, and also enable more ambitious policy changes in the medium to longer-term. Findings of this report are targeted at health and finance policy makers, with improved dialogue between health and finance ministries especially important when governments are operating in a constrained fiscal setting.