Publications & Documents

The Toolkit for Mainstreaming and Implementing Gender Equality 2023 is a practical resource to help governments, parliaments and judiciaries implement the OECD Recommendation on Gender Equality in Public Life. It contains self-assessment tools to guide governments and other decision-making institutions in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their policies, mechanisms, and frameworks for gender equality, and in setting priorities for improvement. The Toolkit highlights a range of possible actions to take and pitfalls to avoid in implementing the various provisions of the Recommendation. A revision of the 2018 online Toolkit on Mainstreaming and Implementing Gender Equality, it introduces concepts such as intersectionality and the future of work; includes expanded areas such as budgeting, public procurement and infrastructure; and provides the latest lessons and good practices from OECD countries.

This paper examines the strategies and practices of Ireland’s Office of Government Procurement (OGP) and how the Irish procurement system’s effectiveness is currently measured. It then applies the OECD framework for measuring public sector productivity to some of the centralised procurement activity in Ireland to better understand effectiveness drivers within procurement processes.

Low-emission hydrogen is expected to play an important role in the energy transition to tackle the climate crisis. It can decarbonate 'hard-to-abate' sectors still relying on fossil fuels, turn low-carbon electricity into a fuel that can be transported using pipelines and provide a green transport alternative, in particular for heavy-duty and long-distance transport. Given its potential to combat climate change, it can allow for a net reduction in societal risks if managed responsibly. However, while its potential is widely acknowledged, its application is not yet meeting ambitions. Regulation is crucial to facilitate its application and ensure its safety. This report analyses trends, risks, and regulation of hydrogen technologies across economies. It supports the use of low-emission hydrogen as part of the energy transition, by making recommendations for effective risk-based regulation, regulatory delivery and governance.

This report looks at the demand for counterfeit goods and identifies its key drivers. It discusses the specificity of the demand for counterfeit goods, including both deliberate and unintentional demand. Indeed, some consumers will deliberately buy counterfeit and pirated goods while others will be deceived into buying illicit products, thinking they are genuine. The report also examines the profiles of destination economies in the global trade of counterfeit and pirated goods. It uses quantitative analysis to study the economic characteristics of various economies, including the quantitative relationship between counterfeit intensity and certain observable socioeconomic factors. The identification of socio-economic factors, in particular, influencing the demand for counterfeit and pirated goods is crucial to help policymakers develop appropriate policies, including better targeting of consumer awareness campaigns.

This report highlights countries’ practices in implementing the OECD Council Recommendation on Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development (PCSD). It illustrates how governments can use institutional mechanisms for PCSD to address complex international problems together – including implementing the 2030 Agenda – and explores how policy coherence principles can be applied to promote whole-of-government approaches to policymaking. The report also applies a PCSD lens to the ocean – one of Earth’s largest global public commons and an obvious cross-border policy challenge. A growing number of countries are developing ocean economy strategies to connect sectoral policy silos, manage ocean resources and regulate ocean activities in a way that supports sustainable development that leaves no one behind.

This report provides an overview of gender budgeting practices across OECD countries, based on the 2022 OECD Survey on Gender Budgeting as well as trends from surveys conducted in 2016 and 2018. It takes stock of countries’ progress in developing an effective and sustainable gender budgeting approach and discusses challenges and plans for the further development of gender budgeting. Country case studies highlight gender budgeting in practice. The report also presents the 2022 OECD Gender Budgeting Index, which compares the implementation of gender budgeting across five key areas: 1) institutional and strategic arrangements; 2) methods and tools; 3) enabling environment; 4) accountability and transparency; and 5) impact.

Multiple institutions are responsible for and contribute to ensuring that infrastructure investments meet policy objectives. The responsibilities of these institutions have evolved over time and vary from country to country, depending on tradition, constitutional arrangements, and government capacities. While they are often complementary, sometimes these responsibilities overlap, creating an additional level of complexity. Understanding the impact of the institutions involved with infrastructure will allow policymakers to make informed decisions. This paper explores both the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ of institutional arrangements. It provides a snapshot of the various institutions involved in the planning, financing, and delivery of infrastructure across OECD Member countries and identifies three broad types of institutional arrangements. The paper contributes to a better understanding of current trends in institutional change, the strengths and challenges of these institutional arrangements, and the potential for sharing experience and expertise among institutions and countries.

Infrastructure plays a pivotal role in achieving climate neutrality and resilience. However, infrastructure is also vulnerable to certain risks, and poor management of infrastructure assets can lead to increased dependency on fossil fuels and lock in climate-related risks. For this reason, an infrastructure governance framework is needed that can direct public investments towards sustainability objectives. To this end, the OECD has provided technical support to the Government of Ireland to strengthen climate-related and environmental considerations in public infrastructure decision making (i.e. strategic planning, project appraisal, budgeting). Building on Irish Public Spending Code and on standardised criteria based on international good practices, this working paper develops a new methodological approach to assessing the climate-related impacts of infrastructure and integrate climate-related risk and uncertainty in the appraisal of infrastructure projects.