Publications & Documents

The frequency and severity of extreme wildfires are on the rise in Greece, 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 Greece's 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.

OECD countries are increasingly investing in better understanding the potential value of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve public governance. The use of AI by the public sector can increase productivity, responsiveness of public services, and strengthen the accountability of governments. However, governments must also mitigate potential risks, building an enabling environment for trustworthy AI. This policy paper outlines the key trends and policy challenges in the development, use, and deployment of AI in and by the public sector. First, it discusses the potential benefits and specific risks associated with AI use in the public sector. Second, it looks at how AI in the public sector can be used to improve productivity, responsiveness, and accountability. Third, it provides an overview of the key policy issues and presents examples of how countries are addressing them across the OECD.

As part of broader digitalisation efforts, half of public employment services (PES) in OECD countries are employing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance their services. AI is being adopted across all key tasks of PES, including most commonly to match jobseekers with vacancies. While several PES have been using such tools for a decade, adoption of AI has been increasing in recent years as these become more accessible. New AI use cases have emerged to assist employers in designing vacancy postings and jobseekers in their career management and job-search strategies. AI initiatives have significant impact on PES clients, changing how they interact with the PES and receive support, and PES staff, altering their day-to-day work. As PES seek to maximise the opportunities brought by AI, proactive steps should be taken to mitigate associated risks. Key considerations for PES include prioritising transparency of AI algorithms and explainability of results, establishing governance frameworks, ensuring end-users (staff and clients) are included and supported in the development and adoption process, and committing to rigorous monitoring and evaluation to increase the positive and manage any negative impact of AI solutions.

Italy’s Universal Civil Service (UCS) engages young people in volunteering activities that enhance practical skill development for employability, active citizenship, and personal growth. Through a joint project between the OECD, the European Commission, and the Department for Youth Policies, Italy aims to improve the design and implementation of the UCS. As part of the project, this report analyses the current monitoring and evaluation framework of the UCS and provides guidance for the development of a robust results-based Monitoring and Evaluation system to improve the system’s ability to track progress and demonstrate impact.

Despite European Union efforts to fight discrimination as part of its Union of Equality strategies, it is difficult to analyse discrimination in EU Member States given the scarcity of official data sources. This paper uses new survey data to examine discrimination against people from racialised communities, LGBTIQ+ people, persons with disability and religious minorities. It explores the role discrimination plays in driving well-being gaps between at-risk groups and the majority of the population. Discrimination, particularly when it occurs frequently, is associated with severe effects across many aspects of people’s lives – constraining income-earning opportunities, exacerbating housing and financial stress, subjecting people to violence, fear and low self-esteem, and contributing to mental ill health. These consequences come at a huge personal cost to the individuals directly affected and to society as a whole.

Informality is not a new phenomenon but today, in face of the multiplication of domestic and global shocks, the vulnerabilities associated with informal work and businesses are an undisputable hurdle to economic resilience and more inclusive and equal societies. Yet, certain policy measures implemented with the intention of addressing the consequences of crises on vulnerable groups in the society – groups that include informal workers and businesses – can unintentionally induce more informality, in a vicious cycle that makes formalisation and resilience even more difficult to reach. The report Informality and Structural Transformation in the Middle East and North Africa outlines a framework for assessing the impact of economic and social policies on informality. The framework was developed jointly by the ILO, OECD and UNDP, and is thought as a hands-on instrument, allowing policy makers to foresee early on in the policymaking cycles the effects diverse economic and social policies could have on the informal economy. This tool adds to the vast literature on informality. Understanding the expected impact of different policies on informality can help governments to identify measures that support their key objectives, e.g. helping firms in financial distress or expanding social protection, without altering motivations and incentives to formalisation.

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 Canada on 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, communication and digital skills. These include skills in budgeting, accounting, written communication, as well as competencies in basic word processing and spreadsheet software. The results also show that, in Canada, demand for social and language skills have increased the most over the past decade in occupations highly exposed to AI. Using a panel of establishments confirms the increasing demand for social and language skills, as well as rising demand for production and physical skills, which may be complementary to AI. However, the establishment panel also finds evidence of decreasing demand for business, management and digital skills in establishments more exposed to AI.

Despite having advanced social protection systems, OECD countries still face challenges in identifying, enrolling, and providing benefits and services to all those in need. Even when programmes are well-designed and adequately funded, cumbersome enrolment processes and challenges in service and benefit delivery can be an obstacle to the full take-up of social programmes. Advances in digital technologies and data can go a long way towards making social protection more accessible and effective. This report presents a stocktaking of OECD governments’ strategies to identify individuals and groups in need, collect and link (potential) beneficiary data across administrative and survey sources, and apply data analytics and new technologies to improve programme enrolment and the benefit/service delivery experience – all with the objective of reaching people in need of support in OECD countries.

While child poverty has decreased significantly in recent years due to increased support for families with children, measures to assist socio-economically disadvantaged children only partially address their challenges. To enhance equality of opportunity and social mobility in Canada, it is crucial to strengthen efforts addressing the root causes of socio-economic disadvantages and bridge gaps in policies aimed at reducing child poverty. This paper presents an overview of child poverty trends in Canada and discusses the challenges associated with the Poverty Reduction Strategy aimed at enhancing equality of opportunity and social mobility.

This working paper provides an overview of a standardised Employee Well-being Survey implemented in four companies in Japan. This survey aligns with international measurement guidelines and practices, including the 2017 OECD Guidelines on Measuring the Quality of the Working Environment, it has been developed under the guidance of the Committee on Statistics and Statistical Policy, and it allows for the calculation at firm level of an equivalent of the Job Strain index, namely the third pillar of the OECD Job Quality framework. The objectives of the study were: i) to pilot the new Employee Well-being Survey at the firm level; ii) to demonstrate the potential of harmonised employee survey data as a source of information on business social performance, with associated benefits for companies, stakeholders, investors, governments and national statistical offices; and iii) to operationalise one element of a proposed framework on measuring non-financial performance of businesses.