Reports

Lobbying and influence activities are legitimate acts of democratic participation and enable different groups to provide input and expertise to the policymaking process. This report looks at Chile’s existing framework to ensure equity, integrity and transparency in public decision-making processes, and assesses its resilience to the risks of undue influence by special interest groups. The report also explores how to improve transparency and facilitate the disclosure of lobbying and influence activities. Finally, it discusses complementary reforms of the legal framework on integrity and transparency that could help strengthen the lobbying framework.

As AI use grows, so do its benefits and risks. These risks can lead to actual harms ('AI incidents') or potential dangers ('AI hazards'). Clear definitions are essential for managing and preventing these risks. This report proposes definitions for AI incidents and related terms. These definitions aim to foster international interoperability while providing flexibility for jurisdictions to determine the scope of AI incidents and hazards they wish to address.

Supreme audit institutions (SAIs) are a critical part of public accountability systems. They ‘watch’ over governments’ use of public money and report about it publicly, helping to increase transparency. SAIs have an interest in strongly engaging with external stakeholders – including citizens – to make sure that their work is relevant, understood and used to hold governments to account. This paper provides a compilation of European SAIs’ practices on communication, co-operation and collaboration with external partners and is intended to provide inspiration to SAIs of EU candidate countries and potential candidates to further strengthen their engagement with their non-governmental stakeholders.

Given the fast pace of global socio-economic development, more tailored, focused, and localised efforts to strengthen public sector capacity in small island developing states (SIDS) is increasingly important. SIDS have unique vulnerabilities, rich histories and contexts, and strengths that can be harnessed for sustainable development. Development partners need to adapt how they provide capacity-strengthening support, taking individual SIDS’ circumstances and needs into account to better help them achieve their ambitions. This report summarises perspectives from small island developing states (SIDS) on current experiences and opportunities to improve capacity-strengthening support to make it more tailored, impactful, and sustainable. The report uses the broad definition of capacity-strengthening as activities that improve the competencies and abilities of individuals, organisations, and broader formal and informal social structures in a way that boosts organisational performance. It concentrates on public sector capacity, including interactions with other stakeholders across sectors.

Emerging technologies can contribute to unprecedented gains in health, energy, climate, food systems, and biodiversity. However, these technologies and their convergence sometimes carry risks to privacy, security, equity and human rights. This dual-edged nature of emerging technology requires policies that better anticipate disruptions and enable technology development for economic prosperity, resilience, security and sustainable development. Drawing on prior OECD work and legal instruments, this framework equips governments, other innovation actors and societies to anticipate and get ahead of governance challenges, and build longer-term capacities to shape innovation more effectively. Its 'anticipatory technology governance' approach consists of five interdependent elements and associated governance tools: (1) embeding values throughout the innovation process; (2) enhancing foresight and technology assessment; (3) engaging stakeholders and society; (4) building regulation that is agile and adaptive; and (5) reinforcing international cooperation in science and norm-making. The emerging technology context determines how each of these elements is applied.

This report analyses the legislative and institutional framework in France relating to the transparency and integrity of foreign influence activities. It identifies concrete policy measures adapted to the French context to make foreign influence activities more transparent, and to discourage foreign interference attempts that are made notably through opaque lobbying and influence activities. It also ensures that the risk of foreign interference is better taken into account when public officials move between the public and private sectors.

This report provides insights on applying behavioural insights to improve public integrity in the public administration of the Slovak Republic. This report illustrates, through a stepwise application of the OECD BASIC toolkit, how corruption risk management policies can be improved through the identification and analysis of undesired behaviours, and through the design and testing of strategies to change these behaviours. Specifically, a randomised controlled trial was employed to test the effect of two behaviourally informed strategies to improve risk communication in the public administration. The results provided novel empirical evidence that: 1) providing support to public servants to better understand risks; and 2) exposing public servants to good leadership examples can improve their propensity to communicate risks. Moreover, it was found that feeling safe, trusting and being aware of risk communication channels also play an important role in improving risk communication. Based on the findings, this report provides recommendations to improve the risk management system of the Slovak Republic and inform the discussion on the upcoming National Anti-corruption Strategy, contributing to advancing the country’s efforts in curbing corruption.

From steering decision-making in times of complexity to stewarding cross-cutting policies and guiding good practices across the public administration, centres of government (CoGs) play an important role in achieving government ambitions. CoGs have recently found themselves under pressure to help navigate increasingly complex policy challenges in an environment characterised by multiple crises, polarisation and declining trust in public institutions. This compendium gathers and shares practices and experiences of CoGs in undertaking their various roles and functions. It describes the mechanisms CoGs use in roles such as bridging the political-administrative interface, stewarding cross-cutting policies, guiding public administration reform, and engaging with citizens and other stakeholders. Finally, it discusses the lessons learnt and key enablers that emerge from the experiences. This compendium serves CoG leaders and government officials who seek to better understand the role of the centre in contributing to better outcomes for citizens and society.

This paper explores the economics of Artificial Intelligence (AI), focusing on its potential as a new General-Purpose Technology that can significantly influence economic productivity and societal wellbeing. It examines AI's unique capacity for autonomy and self-improvement, which could accelerate innovation and potentially revive sluggish productivity growth across various industries, while also acknowledging the uncertainties surrounding AI's long-term productivity impacts. The paper discusses the concentration of AI development in big tech firms, uneven adoption rates, and broader societal challenges such as inequality, discrimination, and security risks. It calls for a comprehensive policy approach to ensure AI's beneficial development and diffusion, including measures to promote competition, enhance accessibility, and address job displacement and inequality.

Most workers who will be exposed to artificial intelligence (AI) will not require specialised AI skills (e.g. machine learning, natural language processing, etc.). Even so, AI will change the tasks these workers do, and the skills they require. This report provides first estimates for the effect of artificial intelligence on the demand for skills in jobs that do not require specialised AI skills. The results show that the skills most demanded in occupations highly exposed to AI are management and business skills. These include skills in general project management, finance, administration and clerical tasks. The results also show that there have been increases over time in the demand for these skills in occupations highly exposed to AI. For example, the share of vacancies in these occupations that demand at least one emotional, cognitive or digital skill has increased by 8 percentage points. However, using a panel of establishments (which induces plausibly exogenous variation in AI exposure), the report finds evidence that the demand for these skills is beginning to fall.