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In 2017, the 'Sláintecare Report' proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the Irish health system including a reform proposal to phase out private practice in public hospitals to end the unequal treatment of public and private patients – private patients typically have quicker access to care – and reduce waiting times for public patients. This paper summarises the arguments for and against this practice that were put forward to help inform the subsequent policy debate. The paper compares how private practice is regulated and organised in Ireland with the situation in four other OECD countries – Australia, France, Israel and the United Kingdom - and discusses the costs and benefits of private practice in public hospitals, and highlights potential consequences of a ban on this practice. It also describes the information required when making a decision whether to ban this practice or not. Finally, the paper discusses some alternative policy approaches that could replace or complement a ban of private practice to discontinue the unequal treatment of public and private patients.

Environmental regulators strive to protect the environment and public health from pollution from economic activity. This report uses the OECD Performance Assessment Framework for Economic Regulators (PAFER) to assess both the internal and external governance of Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It looks at the EPA’s role and objectives, its financial and human resources, processes for internal management and decision making, and systems for performance assessment. The review acknowledges the EPA’s achievements and good practices, analyses the key drivers of its performance, and identifies a number of challenges and opportunities for improvement to help the regulator prepare for the future.

Behavioural insights (BI) has become widely used by public bodies around the world, mostly towards improving the way policies are implemented and influencing individual behaviour. As the field of BI evolves to tackle more complex policy issues, there is widespread perception that BI can and should go beyond the study of individual-level decision processes for higher impact. This report presents research on applying BI to changing the behaviour of organisations, with a focus on fostering elements of a safety culture in the energy sector. It presents comparative findings from experiments with energy regulators in Canada, Ireland, Mexico and Oman, as well as guidance for applying BI to safety culture going forward.

This report presents a study of the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES). The IGEES seeks to improve policy formulation and implementation by providing and building economic and analytical expertise across the Irish civil service. Based on international best practices, the study analyses the extent to which IGEES has contributed to a greater use of evidence-informed policy making in Ireland. It provides an overview of the service’s achievements and remaining challenges and makes recommendations for the future.

This paper presents and discusses the general findings and key policy messages of the 2019 OECD Open, Useful and Re-usable data (OURdata) Index, and provides a detailed analysis of the results for each pillar and sub-pillar. Additionally, it assesses the main advancements and challenges related to the design and implementation of open government data (OGD) policies in OECD member and partner countries by comparing the results for 2019 with those of the 2017 edition. This policy paper contributes to the OECD work on the digital transformation of the public sector, including digital government and data-driven public sector and open government data.

This profile provides a concise and policy-relevant overview of health and the health system in Ireland as part of the broader series of the State of Health in the EU country profiles. It provides a short synthesis of: the health status in the country; the determinants of health, focussing on behavioural risk factors; the organisation of the health system; and the effectiveness, accessibility and resilience of the health system. This profile is the joint work of the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, in co-operation with the European Commission.

Twenty-first century governments must keep pace with the expectations of their citizens and deliver on the promise of the digital age. Data-driven approaches are particularly effective for meeting those expectations and rethinking the way governments and citizens interact. This report highlights the important role data can play in creating conditions that improve public services, increase the effectiveness of public spending and inform ethical and privacy considerations. It presents a data-driven public sector framework that can help countries or organisations assess the elements needed for using data to make better-informed decisions across public sectors.

In the wake of the technological revolution that began in the last decades of the 20th century, labour-market demand for information-processing and other high-level cognitive and interpersonal skills have been growing substantially. Based on the results from the 33 countries and regions that participated in the 1st and 2nd round of the Survey of Adult Skills in 2011-12 and in 2014-15, this report describes adults’ proficiency in three information-processing skills, and examines how proficiency is related to labour-market and social outcomes. It also places special emphasis on the results from the 3rd and final round of the first cycle of PIAAC in 2017-18, which included 6 countries (Ecuador, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Peru and the United States). The Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), was designed to provide insights into the availability of some of these key skills in society and how they are used at work and at home. The first survey of its kind, it directly measures proficiency in three information-processing skills: literacy, numeracy and problem-solving in technology-rich environments.

This edition of the Reader’s Companion accompanies Skills Matter: Additional Results from the Survey of Adult Skills that reports the results from the 39 countries and regions that participated in the 3 rounds of data collection in the first cycle of PIAAC, with a particular focus on the 6 countries that participated in the third round of the study (Ecuador, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Peru and the United States). It describes the design and methodology of the survey and its relationship to other international assessments of young students and adults. The Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), was designed to provide insights into the availability of some key skills in society and how they are used at work and at home. The first survey of its kind, it directly measures proficiency in several information-processing skills – namely literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments.