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Infrastructure is an essential consideration when it comes to both climate change mitigation and adaptation. It plays a pivotal role in achieving climate neutrality and resilience but is also susceptible to certain risks. As infrastructure has a long lifespan, it is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change over time. Poor planning and management of infrastructure assets can also increase dependency on fossil fuels and lock in climate risks. It is thus important that infrastructure is implemented in a way that helps address environmental and climate challenges. Developing effective strategies to meet environmental and climate objectives is one of the main priorities of the Irish Government. Project Ireland 2040 offers a unique opportunity to ensure that infrastructure investments support climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. Building on this impetus, the OECD has provided technical support to the Irish Government to strengthen climate and environmental considerations in its public infrastructure decision making process. This policy paper sets out a detailed overview of infrastructure planning, project appraisal and budgeting practice in Ireland, and identifies challenges and opportunities for environmental and climate considerations.

This report outlines the findings of a review of public investment processes in Bulgaria and provides recommendations for improving its effectiveness and efficiency. It focuses on infrastructure planning, investment and delivery at the national and municipal levels. The report identifies what Bulgaria should retain and improve upon to ensure that investments made at the European, State and municipal levels achieve value for money and contribute to people’s well-being and living standards.

The Open Government Review provides an evidence-based assessment of the country’s open government agenda against the ten provisions of the OECD Recommendation of the Council on Open Government. The review takes stock of past reform efforts and provides guidance for Romania in designing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating an integrated policy agenda to improve the relationship between government and citizens and the way they interact. In particular, this review highlights areas of opportunity for Romania regarding transparency, citizen and stakeholder participation, and creating an open state. Moreover, it outlines steps towards the design of the country’s first open government strategy, including an improved system of monitoring and evaluation.

The Civic Space Review of Romania provides an in-depth analysis of national legal frameworks, policies, institutions, and practices relevant to civic space protection. It reviews strengths and areas for improvement, and providing guidance on a wide range of issues. The Review assesses four key dimensions of civic space: civic freedoms, media freedoms and online civic space, the enabling environment for civil society organisations, and citizen participation in policy and decision making. The findings and recommendations offer a blueprint for a more transparent, responsive, participatory, and accountable governance in Romania that informs and engages citizens and empowers stakeholders to achieve shared objectives together.

The Rethinking Regional Attractiveness in the New Global Environment report highlights lessons learned from multiple regional case studies from five EU countries (Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden), additional work with Latin American and Caribbean regions, and a series of webinars and one-on-one dialogues on rethinking regional attractiveness. The OECD’s innovative multidimensional approach to assessing regional attractiveness considers global engagement beyond international connections and economic factors alone. The methodology considers more than 50 indicators to develop regional attractiveness profiles covering six domains of attractiveness: economic attraction, connectedness, visitor appeal, natural environment, resident well-being, and land-use and housing. The report helps regional and national policy makers to understand how individual regions fare in a new global environment that continues to deal with the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, compounded by the consequences of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and existing megatrends – all of which produce asymmetric impacts within and between countries and regions – and identify the policy levers available to enhance their attractiveness to the international target groups of investors, talent, and visitors. It also considers the need to co-ordinate across levels of government, across policy fields, and with private stakeholders, and highlights good practices to implement regional attractiveness policies.

This study provides an in-depth examination of the fiscal and governance decentralisation of long-term care (LTC) across OECD countries, offering projections of future fiscal burdens of LTC spending across levels of government. With rapid population ageing and a decrease in the supply of informal care, LTC spending has increased significantly. The paper introduces a novel methodology to estimate LTC expenditures across different government levels, including central and subnational governments. By analysing country cases, it explores the responsibilities assigned to each government level and the implications for service delivery and intergovernmental coordination. The study also discusses the overall anticipated increase of LTC expenditure to 2.3% of GDP by 2040, identifying the most impacted countries. This research contributes to our understanding of LTC systems, highlights the challenges of increasing LTC costs and provides insights for optimising governance and fiscal expenditure.

Governments operate in an increasingly volatile environment, marked by disruptive crises and cross-cutting policy challenges. This context has highlighted the importance centres of government (CoG) in setting up effective co-ordination systems, capable of developing and implementing coherent, whole-of-government responses to immediate threats, while steering the country towards a sustainable and resilient future. This policy paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the current legal, organisational and policy framework and practices in Romania as they relate to policy co-ordination, within the CoG and between the CoG and ministries. It also provides recommendations for consolidating the General Secretariat of the Government’s capacity and role in policy development and co-ordination, to improve the coherence of government action and, ultimately, achieve government priorities and commitments.

The 2023 edition of Government at a Glance provides a comprehensive overview of public governance and public administration practices in OECD Member and partner countries. It includes indicators on trust in public institutions and satisfaction with public services, as well as evidence on good governance practices in areas such as the policy cycle, budgeting, public procurement, infrastructure planning and delivery, regulatory governance, digital government and open government data. Finally, it provides information on what resources public institutions use and how they are managed, including public finances, public employment, and human resources management. Government at a Glance allows for cross-country comparisons and helps identify trends, best practices, and areas for improvement in the public sector.

The precautionary principle has been an important aspect of regulatory delivery for nearly four decades. Now widely applied and with a global reach, the principle is often invoked whenever the scientific evidence surrounding the safety of a given technology is not conclusive. It is often applied where a safety risk is known to exist, but the probability and magnitude of harm are uncertain or unknown. The principle thus supports — and is an important element of — risk-based regulation. It is an important principle for the energy transition, in particular, though it is complex to apply in practice. The safety risk of technologies supporting the energy transition is immediate, which can lead regulators to operate and apply the principle over-cautiously — sometimes to the extent of complete inaction. This report examines how the precautionary principle can be used to support flexible decision making by helping regulators and operators manage risk through positive action.