Arrival of participants and morning coffee

Bridging divides - from diagnosis to action

A conversation with Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General. Read the speech.

Launch of the OECD Digital Economy Outlook (session open to media)

Opening Remarks by Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General
Dirk Pilat, Deputy Director, Science, Technology and Innovation

Discussant: Janine Alm Ericson, Member of Parliament, Sweden

Digital transformation is under way, creating new opportunities and affecting organisations, jobs and lives in ways never seen before. Digital opportunities abound, but governments must ensure they are equally harnessed by all countries, firms and individuals. To navigate the digital transformation, governments need to review legacy frameworks, embracing digital innovation and mitigating potential social cost. They also must step up efforts to empower people with the skills needed to succeed in a digital world. A new sense of urgency to marshal digital development for productivity and more inclusive and sustainable prosperity has pushed digital issues high on national and global policy agendas. In this context, the OECD has started to undertake a large cross-cutting project focused on making the transformation work for growth and well-being.

This session explored key insights from the new OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2017, which provides a holistic overview of converging trends, policy developments and data on both the supply and demand sides of the digital economy, and illustrates how the digital transformation is affecting economies and societies. 

Coffee break

Integration of migrants - Case studies

Claire Charbit, Senior Project Manager, Regional Development Policy, Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Local Development and Tourism
Jonathan Chaloff, Administrator, Migration Policy Division, Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs
Anne-Sophie Senner, Migration Analyst, Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs

Discussants: Scott Simms, Member of Parliament, Canada and Güler Turan, Member of Flemish Parliament, Belgium

Integrating immigrants and their children is a major policy concern for many OECD countries. Immigrants represent a sizeable segment of our population: more than one in five persons in the OECD is either foreign-born or native-born with at least one immigrant parent - and this share is expected to grow further. Yet, the outcomes of immigrants lag behind those with native-born parents in all major areas of integration, including the labour market, education, and social inclusion. In addition, immigrants tend to gather in urban and capital city-regions: two-thirds of the foreign-born population in the OECD live in urban areas on average, while asylum seekers seem to be more evenly distributed. Tackling barriers to integration is essential to ensure social cohesion and the acceptance of further immigration by the host country population. Achieving it needs to adopt a territorial approach to take into account the variety of local situations and build appropriate coordination mechanisms with local governments, in charge of 40% of public spending and 60% of public investment on average in the OECD. 

This session drew on key lessons from the OECD’s work on integration and summarise the main challenges and good policy practices to support the lasting integration of immigrants and their children. It provided parliamentarians with facts and evidence on integration outcomes, as well as a number of good practice policy approaches. It focused on the specific integration challenges faced by persons who migrate for family reasons – the single most important motive for migration in OECD countries – and on good practices to manage integration at the local level.

Lunch
Room Roger Ockrent, Château de la Muette

Public sector innovation and co-creation

Marco Daglio, Project Manager, Observatory for Public Sector Innovation ()

This interactive sessions looked into the role parliamentarians can have in public sector innovation. By working in small groups, parliamentarians were able to experiment with new tools to analyse complex issues and reflect on their role as drivers of policy change. The group works highlighted how to frame problems in a new way, how to use “living personas” in a problem session and how to initiate a systemic innovation process.

16.00 - 16.15

Coffee break

Inclusive Ageing - Action Plan

Stefano Scarpetta, Director of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs

Discussant: Rihards Kols, Member of Parliament, Latvia

The OECD is examining how the two global mega-trends of population ageing and rising inequalities have been developing and interacting, both within and across generations. This work, and specifically a new report “Preventing Ageing Unequally” (to be released on 18 October), will take a life-course perspective, showing how inequalities in education, health, employment and income interact, and can result in large lifetime disparities across different groups.

This discussion focused on a policy agenda for more inclusive ageing to prevent, mitigate and cope with inequalities and ensure a better retirement for all, with policies coordinated across family, education, employment, social ministries and agencies.

17.30 - 17.45

Looking forward

Marketplace of Ideas Reception

with remarks by Mari Kiviniemi, Deputy Secretary-General, OECD

Room Roger Ockrent, Château de la Muette

Arrival of participants and morning coffee

Meeting of the OECD Parliamentary Group on Integrity and Transparency (open to all participants):
Introductory remarks - Overview on transparency

Julio Bacio Terracino, Deputy Head of Division, Public Sector Integrity, Directorate for Public Governance

Budget transparency and measuring budget transparency in parliaments

Ronnie Downes, Deputy Head of Division, Budgeting and Public Expenditures, Directorate for Public Governance

Parliaments, budget transparency, and emerging good practices

Scherie Nicol, Policy Analyst, Budgeting and Public Expenditures, Directorate for Public Governance

Budget transparency brings many benefits for citizens and for society, but putting it into practice can sometimes appear as a daunting task.

This session highlighted the Budgeting and public expenditures - developed by the OECD with the participation of the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) Network - and the practical steps that it provides for supporting openness, integrity and accountability in public financial management. Furthermore, it shone a spotlight on the specific role that parliaments have in ensuring budget transparency, highlighting emerging good practices. It was followed by a discussion on measuring budget transparency in parliaments.

Coffee break

Participatory budgeting: Some key challenges and questions for debate

Meeting of the OECD Global Parliamentary Network - Closing remarks

Carol Guthrie, Head of Public Affairs and media, OECD