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In Brazil, as in other countries, innovation in the public sector is a core leadership challenge. Reflection is required on who these leaders are, what they should be able to do, and how they should be selected and held accountable to achieve results. This study establishes a new assessment framework for senior civil service (SCS) systems, based on the 2019 OECD Recommendation on Public Service Leadership and Capability. Using this framework, the study assesses Brazil’s current system and recommends specific actions to improve it. The report also contributes to a broader debate on public leadership competencies in public sector innovation, and the systems needed to appoint the most effective people and help them achieve results.

The series Investing in Youth builds on the expertise of the OECD on youth employment, social support and skills. It covers both OECD countries and key emerging economies. The report on Korea presents new results from a comprehensive analysis of the situation of young people in Korea, exploiting various sources of survey-based and administrative data. It provides a detailed assessment of education, employment and social policies in Korea from an international perspective, and offers tailored recommendations to help improve the school-to-work transition. Earlier reviews in the same series have looked at youth policies in Brazil (2014), Latvia and Tunisia (2015), Australia, Lithuania and Sweden (2016), Japan (2017), Norway (2018), and Finland and Peru (2019).

Korean families are changing fast. While birth rates remain low, Koreans are marrying and starting a family later than ever before, if at all. Couple-with-children households, the dominant household type in Korea until recently, will soon make up fewer than one quarter of all households. These changes will have a profound effect on Korea’s future. Among other things, the Korean labour force is set to decline by about 2.5 million workers by 2040, with potential major implications for economic performance and the sustainability of public finances. Since the early 2000s, public policy has changed to help parents reconcile work and family commitments: Korea has developed a comprehensive formal day-care and kindergarten system with enrolment rates that are now on par with the Nordic countries. Korea also has one year of paid parental leave for both parents, but only about 25% of mothers and 5% of fathers use it, as workplace cultures are often not conducive to parents, especially fathers, taking leave. Cultural change will take time, but this review suggests there also is a need for additional labour market, education and social policy reform to help Koreans achieve both work and family aspirations, and contribute to the rejuvenation of Korean society.

Government at a Glance Southeast Asia 2019 is the first edition in the Government at a Glance series for the region. It provides the latest available data on public administrations in the 10 ASEAN member countries: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam. This publication includes indicators on public finance and economics, public employment, budget practices and procedures, strategic human resources management, digital government, open government and citizen satisfaction with public services. Where possible, these data were compared against the OECD average and that of the neighbouring OECD member countries, such as Australia, Korea, Japan and New Zealand. Each indicator in the publication is presented in a user-friendly format, consisting of graphs and/or charts illustrating variations across countries and over time, brief descriptive analyses highlighting the major findings conveyed by the data, and a methodological section on the definition of the indicator and any limitations in data comparability.

This report describes recent trends in the international migration of doctors and nurses in OECD countries. Over the past decade, the number of doctors and nurses has increased in many OECD countries, and foreign-born and foreign-trained doctors and nurses have contributed to a significant extent. New in-depth analysis of the internationalisation of medical education shows that in some countries (e.g. Israel, Norway, Sweden and the United States) a large and growing number of foreign-trained doctors are people born in these countries who obtained their first medical degree abroad before coming back. The report includes four case studies on the internationalisation of medical education in Europe (France, Ireland, Poland and Romania) as well as a case study on the integration of foreign-trained doctors in Canada.

Belgium has a high level of productivity. However, growth of productivity has declined quite strongly over the past two decades, and more so than in other advanced economies. This is a worrying development, as fewer productivity gains mean less wage growth and a slowdown in improvements to pensions, health care and well-being. This In-Depth Productivity Review of Belgium assesses in detail the drivers of productivity and recommends a 7-Point Action Plan to reignite productivity growth in Belgium. Reviving productivity growth requires action in many areas cutting across governments and ministerial competences. Measures are needed to instil more dynamism in Belgium’s economy, both among businesses and in the labour market, and to make the public finances more growth-oriented. In addition to recommending detailed policy measures to revive productivity growth, the Review contains three analytical chapters that lay out the evidence base: Chapter 1 on economy-wide and sectoral trends in productivity; Chapter 2 on the role of firms for productivity, with a focus on the dispersion of performance among businesses; and Chapter 3 on the worker dimension of productivity, with a focus on the role of wage bargaining and skills.