By Date

The price regulation conducted by economic regulators is a high-stakes process, with significant and lasting impacts on current and future service quality and the overall performance of the regulated sector. This report tracks the efforts of the economic regulator of the Scottish water sector to make the results of its price-setting process work better for the customers of today and tomorrow, addressing issues such as customer engagement, sustainable asset management and climate change. Based on the results of a multi-year peer review, it analyses the process and outputs of the price setting process. It also sets out recommendations to help parties strengthen the resilience and stability of the regulatory framework while not losing sight of strategic vision and objectives.

Economic regulators are key to the performance of network sectors such as energy, e-communications, transport and water. They regulate and supervise to ensure sectors that can efficiently deliver essential services for the benefit of society. Operating from a unique position in relation to consumers, operators and government, they provide evidence-based and objective decision making that can build trust in the regulatory system and public institutions. A crucial factor in their ability to do this is their governance, including how they are resourced. Resourcing arrangements can make or break regulators’ effectiveness. Constraints in their funding or in their autonomy to manage resources may limit regulators’ agility or capacity to act. Where these constraints are significant, they may undermine the regulator’s ability to fulfil their mandates. This report discusses the implications of funding and staff arrangements for the autonomy, agility, accountability and transparency of regulators in the energy, e-communications, transport and water sectors. It identifies trends, challenges, opportunities and good practices, drawing upon survey responses from 57 economic regulators across 31 countries.

Good governance is a building block for the performance of regulators, including civil aviation authorities. This paper reports the results of a mapping of governance arrangements across 29 civil aviation authorities in Latin American and Caribbean countries, with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s South American and North American, Central American and Caribbean regions. Applying the methodology of the OECD Indicators on the Governance of Sector Regulators, the results provide a birds-eye view of the independence, accountability and scope of action of participating authorities. This paper explains the indicator methodology, summarises key data points, and presents high-level take aways.

This working paper presents two case studies of agile regulatory governance focusing, respectively, on civilian drones and bio-solutions (i.e. the use of renewable bio-resources for industrial scale production, for example with a view to creating alternatives to petro-based and chemical products). Each of the case studies looks at the main transformative impacts of the innovations at hand as well as the associated regulatory challenges and responses. They complement a compilation of Case Studies on the Regulatory Challenges Raised by Innovation and the Regulatory Responses developed jointly between the OECD and the Korean Development Institute (2021) and provide further evidence to support the implementation of the OECD Recommendation for Agile Regulatory Governance to Harness Innovation.

Italy's National Action Plan for Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development (PCSD) brings together the institutional mechanisms, evaluation frameworks and coherence tools needed to integrate sustainable development into government policy making. This Action Plan shows how to streamline existing mechanisms to improve policy coherence across levels of government and to involve civil society more closely in policy formulation. It also suggests how to make the most of complementarities across existing data collection efforts. The Action Plan includes suggestions for better linking mandates across departments and levels of government to avoid overlap and make greater progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Finally, it provides targets and measurable processes for each action to help track progress.