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This document describes good practices for the licensing of protected elements included in OECD Test Guidelines (TGs). Transparency and communication are needed around protected elements resulting from innovation in sciences and techniques that are gradually integrated in OECD TGs. This Guidance specifies the information required from a test method developer when submitting a proposal for a new TG that contains protected elements. This document contains a broad overview of the intellectual property and similar protections that affect the OECD TG Programme. Laws governing intellectual property and similar rights vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; anyone seeking to answer specific questions about the interpretation of the concepts in this paper in a specific jurisdiction must seek the advice of a specialised lawyer.
Physico-chemical properties are key starting points for risk assessments of chemicals. They provide a description of the chemical, and prove useful in assessment of environmental behaviour, uptake routes into organisms, toxicokinetics and ultimate effects in organisms. For nanomaterials, relevant physico-chemical properties can differ from those commonly considered for non-nanomaterials (e.g. surface area versus boiling point). With this in mind, The OECD WPMN has striven to develop tools that can assist in identifying appropriate physico-chemical parameters to better understand the link between those parameters and potential human health and environmental effects of nanomaterials, and to facilitate prediction of such effects. This report is intended to help in improving the conduction of the studies, in addition to promoting consistent data reporting (including reporting details on sample preparation and measurement protocols) to maximise utility and comparability of the data.
The Guiding Principles for Durable Extractive Contracts (the Guiding Principles) provide guidance on how resource projects can be developed to reflect the balance of risks and rewards that underpins durable contracts, while taking into account community interests and concerns since the very beginning. The Guiding Principles offer a blueprint for the content and negotiation of durable extractive contracts that can reduce the drivers of renegotiation and can provide adaptive and flexible provisions that, for example, can automatically adjust to prevailing market conditions. They also aim to assist host governments and investors in explaining the content of the contract to the public, thereby helping to overcome tensions between stakeholders. The Guiding Principles set out eight principles and supporting commentary that host governments and investors, as well as negotiation support providers and legal practitioners, can use as a common reference for future negotiations of enduring, sustainable and mutually beneficial extractive contracts.
This report is intended to provide universal Guiding Principles that should be considered when developing or augmenting systematic approaches to Weight of Evidence (WoE) for chemical evaluation and Key Elements to formulating a systematic approach to WoE. The ultimate goal is to facilitate that regulators follow a consistent, clear and transparent delivery of evidence using the Principles and Elements described in this document. This can be especially helpful for countries with no existing WoE frameworks or those looking to augment their approaches. It also allows for stakeholders to understand a WoE decision-making process, including potential for unreasonable bias. These Guiding Principles and Key Elements can be employed to develop frameworks that range from simple and pragmatic approaches to more elaborate systems, depending on the context.
This document is intended to provide universal Guiding Principles that should be considered when developing or augmenting systematic approaches to Weight of Evidence (WoE) for chemical evaluation and Key Elements to formulating a systematic approach to WoE. The ultimate goal is to facilitate that regulators follow a consistent, clear and transparent delivery of evidence using the Principles and Elements described in this document. This can be especially helpful for countries with no existing WoE frameworks or those looking to augment their approaches. It also allows for stakeholders to understand a WoE decision-making process, including potential for unreasonable bias. These Guiding Principles and Key Elements can be employed to develop frameworks that range from simple and pragmatic approaches to more elaborate systems, depending on the context.
These guidelines discuss cross-cutting issues that can affect the effective procurement of infrastructure and associated services necessary to host Olympic and Paralympic Games. Designed for organising committees responsible for the overall delivery of the Games, the guidelines offer examples, good practices and practical tools to help mitigate these risks. They also provide checklists to help organisers of large international events assess their exposure to the risks identified in this report.
The Guidelines on Anti-Corruption and Integrity in State-Owned Enterprises (ACI Guidelines) are the first international instrument to offer states, in their role as enterprise owners, support in fighting corruption and promoting integrity the enterprises they own.They can help states to ensure that owners exemplify integrity in their conduct, that ownership arrangements are conducive to integrity, that state-owened enterprises adhere to good practices at the SOE level and that accountability mechanisms are integral to SOE sectors. The Guidelines complement the goals of the OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises.
Development practitioners are often ill equipped to analyse the potential of communities to cope with the complex, interconnected and evolving risks they face. As a result, development and humanitarian programmes only partially integrate those resilience aspects. These guidelines propose a step-by-step approach to resilience systems analysis, to help field practitioners prepare for, and facilitate, a successful multi-stakeholder resilience analysis workshop; design a roadmap to boost the resilience of communities and societies; and integrate the results of the analysis into their development and humanitarian programming.
The following guidelines provide detailed guidance on how to organize a Resilience System Analysis workshop. They support the OECD’s “Guidance for Resilience System Analysis”.
With the recent increase in cross-border higher education, systems of quality assurance, accreditation and recognition of qualifications face big challenges.
The Guidelines for Quality Provision in Cross-border Higher Education provide an international framework to protect students and other stakeholders from low-quality provision and disreputable providers. They provide guidance to key stakeholders on how to share the responsibility of assuring quality provision of cross-border higher education between the sending country and the receiving country. The Guidelines were elaborated in close collaboration with UNESCO.
FURTHER READING
The trends and challenges of cross-border higher education are addressed in more details in Quality and Recognition in Higher Education: The Cross-border Challenge (OECD, 2004); and Internationalisation and Trade in Higher Education: Opportunities and Challenges (OECD, 2004).
Bid rigging is an illegal practice in all OECD member countries and can be investigated and sanctioned under the competition law and rules. The OECD Guidelines provide a strategy for the design of tenders to hinder bid rigging and for the detection of bid rigging during the tender process.
Improving the environmental performance of agriculture is a high priority in OECD and many non-OECD countries. This will be of increasing concern in the future given the pressure to feed a growing world population with scarce land and water resources. Policy has an important role to play where markets for many of the environmental outcomes from agriculture are absent or poorly functioning.
This study focuses on the design and implementation of environmental standards and regulations, taxes, payments and tradable permit schemes to address agri-environmental issues. It deals with the choice of policy instruments and the design of specific instruments, with the aim of identifying those that are most cost-effective in very different situations across OECD countries.
Key conclusions from the study are that: there is no unique instrument that promises to achieve all agri-environmental policy goals; the cost effectiveness of payments systems could be improved by using performance-based measures; and policy mixes need to combine policy instruments that complement and not conflict with each other.
The Guidelines for Consumer Protection in the Context of Electronic Commerce are designed to help ensure that consumers are no less protected when shopping on line than they are when they buy from their local store or order from a catalogue. By setting out the core characteristics of effective consumer protection for online business-to-consumer transactions, the Guidelines are intended to help eliminate some of the uncertainties that both consumers and businesses encounter when buying and selling on line. The Guidelines reflect existing legal protections available to consumers in more traditional forms of commerce. Their aim is to encourage: - fair business, advertising and marketing practices; - clear information about an online business’s identity, the goods or services it offers and the terms and conditions of any transaction; - a transparent process for the confirmation of transactions; - secure payment mechanisms; - fair, timely and affordable dispute resolution and redress; - privacy protection; and - consumer and business education.
A Defined Approach (DA) consists of a selection of information sources (e.g in silico predictions, in chemico, in vitro data) used in a specific combination, and resulting data are interpreted using a fixed data interpretation procedure (DIP) (e.g. a mathematical, rule-based model). DAs use methods in combination and are intended to overcome some limitations of the individual, stand-alone methods. The first three DAs included in this Guideline use combinations of OECD validated in chemico and in vitro test data, in some cases along with in silico information, to come to a rules-based conclusion on potential dermal sensitisation hazard. The DAs included in this Guideline have shown to either provide the same level of information or be more informative than the murine Local Lymph Node Assay (LLNA; OECD TG 429) for hazard identification (i.e. sensitiser versus non-sensitiser). In addition, two of the DAs provide information for sensitisation potency categorisation that is equivalent to the potency categorisation information provided by the LLNA.
This guidebook outlines and discusses the steps involved in selecting, implementing and evaluating policy actions and interventions to improve public health. The guidebook is applicable to all types of public health interventions such as those addressing alcohol and tobacco consumption, obesity, physical inactivity, multimorbidity and mental health as well as infectious diseases. Although designed primarily for policy makers, the guidebook is also a useful reference for other stakeholders such as those responsible for delivering an intervention.
The world remains far off track to reach universal access to electricity by 2030 – a key target canonised in UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7). While many countries have set targets to advance universal electrification, it remains challenging to collect timely data on their progress, making it difficult to build or refine their electrification plans and policy strategies.
To provide governments with the tools to achieve their goals, the Guidebook for Improved Electricity Access Statistics (hereafter “Guidebook”) focuses on methodologies using readily available supply-side data from electric utilities, mini-grid operators, and off-grid system distributors to track access to electricity trends. This approach can be adopted at a low-cost and provides accurate estimates on access rates with a potential time lag on the order of months, instead of years. Supply-side data complements household or census surveys, which can give a more nuanced, detailed picture, but are typically only run every five to ten years due to their expense.
This report provides step-by-step guidelines on how to implement an improved supply-side data collection process, and produce more time-sensitive and comprehensive access to electricity indicators. In addition, the Guidebook proposes a standard method to capture mini-grids and stand-alone off-grid systems in calculating access to electricity, which are becoming increasingly more commonplace in strategies to reach universal access. Finally, the Guidebook suggests further steps practitioners can take to advance geospatial data collection and reporting, which has become the new best practice for electrification planning supporting both electric utilities and the vibrant off-grid industry.
This report provides a number of recommendations aimed to reinforce regulatory frameworks for monitoring of related party transactions (RTPs).
Abusive related party transactions – where a party in control of a company enters into a transaction to the detriment of non-controlling shareholders - are one of the biggest corporate governance challenges facing the Asian business landscape. This Guide provides policymakers, enforcement authorities, private institutions, shareholders and other stakeholders with options for monitoring and curbing such abusive related party transactions, focusing on disclosure and the board/shareholders approval system. It also looks into the role of auditors and independent directors
This resource note addresses some of the key challenges that NCPs have faced or are likely to face in their handling of specific instances that involve the rights of indigenous peoples. It examines what is understood by the term “indigenous peoples”, the relationship between the OECD Guidelines and indigenous peoples, explores relevant NCP cases and the key topics that arise from the cases. The note then puts forward practical considerations to help NCPs better manage cases involving the rights of indigenous peoples.
This Guide considers current challenges in building and maintaining perceived and effective impartiality amongst NCPs and identifies good practices and tools in this regard. In particular, it addresses the notion of impartiality mean and how is it challenged by perceptions of bias and conflict of interest, and discusses how institutional arrangements can be used to build and maintain impartiality in the NCP system. It also discusses how NCPs can build and maintain impartiality at the individual level, by reference to measures and tools that NCPs are currently using.