By Date

Rising disinformation has far-reaching consequences in many policy areas ranging from public health to national security. It can cast doubt on factual evidence, jeopardise the implementation of public policies and undermine people's trust in the integrity of democratic institutions. This report explores how to respond to these challenges and reinforce democracy. It presents an analytical framework to guide countries in the design of policies, looking at three complementary dimensions: implementing policies to enhance the transparency, accountability, and plurality of information sources; fostering societal resilience to disinformation; and upgrading governance measures and public institutions to uphold the integrity of the information space.

Since 2014, the Flemish government has undertaken a series of reforms of its budgetary system, including the implementation of performance-informed budgeting, which includes both the implementation of spending reviews and performance budgeting. The aim of the reforms is to better integrate policy development and resource allocation and improve the accountability and transparency of the Flemish public sector. This report takes stock of performance-informed budgeting practices in Flanders. It provides an assessment of their key strengths and highlights where improvements can be made. Finally, it includes recommendations to further strengthen the approach to performance-informed budgeting in Flanders.

In many countries, public expenditure, including transfers, plays a major role in reducing income inequality. The report reviews the various ways that budgeting can be used to this end. A first includes taking a broad approach to results-based budgeting, taking social and distributional goals into consideration. A second relies on integrating distributional impact analysis directly into the budget process. The report discusses the concrete experience of eight OECD countries in this area, analysing how they are integrating distributional impact assessment in spending and budgeting decisions. Finally, it discusses the tools, frameworks and data that are needed to take distributional considerations into account as part of evidence-informed policy making.

Policy coherence relies on the development of strategic plans, the availability and use of relevant evidence and data, the right set of skills across the public administration, political commitment, and leadership. Effective policy coherence cannot be achieved without good co-ordination, which relies on sound co-ordination mechanisms, such as interministerial committees or councils, as well as information-sharing tools. The legitimacy and coherence of public policy is also grounded in the support that a government has from stakeholders and citizens. This policy paper offers a tailored policy framework for Romania that builds further on the other outputs of the TSI project 'Enhancing Policy Coherence, Transparency, and Co-ordination at the Centre of Government in Romania'. It includes tailored and actionable tools for improving policy coherence across government by strengthening policy development, co-ordination, and stakeholder participation.

This policy paper analyses the institutional mechanisms in place and under preparation in Romania to steer and co-ordinate policy development and action priorities relating to climate change. It also reviews the risks and opportunities for the newly created co-ordination mechanisms within the centre of government in this policy area, looks at how the co-ordination mechanisms for greening of the economy align with existing governance frameworks in terms of mandate, and discusses lessons learned from the framework for sustainable development. Drawing upon extensive consultations and peer input from OECD countries, this policy paper offers tailored recommendations for enhancing green governance in Romania.

Digital technologies are having a profound impact on economies, labour markets and societies. They also have the potential to transform government, by enabling the implementation of more accessible and effective services. To support a shift towards digital government, investment is needed in developing the skills of civil servants. This paper reviews good practices across OECD countries to foster skills for digital government. It presents different approaches in public administration to organising training activities as well as opportunities for informal learning. It also provides insights into how relevant skills can be identified through competence frameworks, how they can be assessed, and how learning opportunities can be evaluated.

This report analyses the performance of public administration in Ukraine through a set of standard indicators based on the Principles of Public Administration. The Principles set out what good public governance entails in practice and outline the main requirements to be followed by countries during the European Union (EU) integration process. They address the preconditions for a good public administration (good laws, policies, institutional capacity and procedures) and how an administration performs in practice. In its 2014 and 2018 Enlargement Strategies, the European Commission highlighted public administration reform as one of three 'fundamentals first' areas of the EU enlargement process. Given the European Council decision of December 2023 to open accession negotiations with Ukraine, this report provides data and recommendations on how Ukraine could better meet the standards set by the Principles. The report follows up on the 2018 SIGMA Baseline Measurement Report and provides comparative information on reform successes and remaining challenges. It covers the six thematic areas of the Principles (strategic framework of public administration reform, policy development and co-ordination, public service and human resource management, accountability, service delivery and public financial management). The report provides indicator values and comparison of overall trends across the administration.

Digital government is essential to transform government processes and services in ways that improve the responsiveness and reliability of the public sector. During the COVID-19 pandemic it also proved crucial to governments' ability to continue operating in times of crisis and provide timely services to citizens and businesses. Yet, for the digital transformation to be sustainable in the long term, it needs solid foundations, including adaptable governance arrangements, reliable and resilient digital public infrastructure, and a prospective approach to governing with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. This paper presents the main findings of the 2023 edition of the OECD Digital Government Index (DGI), which benchmarks the efforts made by governments to establish the foundations necessary for a coherent, human-centred digital transformation of the public sector. It comprises 155 data points from 33 member countries, 4 accession countries and 1 partner country collected in 2022, covering the period between 01 January 2020 and 31 October 2022.

The frequency and severity of extreme wildfires are on the rise in the United States, causing unprecedented disruption and increasingly challenging the country’s capacity to contain losses and damages. These challenges are set to keep growing in the context of climate change, highlighting the need to scale up wildfire prevention and climate change adaptation. This paper provides an overview of the United States’ wildfire policies and practices and assesses the extent to which wildfire management in the country is evolving to adapt to growing wildfire risk under climate change.