These principles give practical guidance for designing, implementing and improving budget systems to meet the challenges of the future. They are currently being considered as a draft Recommendation of the OECD Council, underpinning their importance to good public governance.

Ensuring tax and transfer systems bring sufficient revenue to reach macroeconomic fiscal targets, address societal goals in re-distribution and social welfare, recognise the influence taxation has on businesses’ competitiveness and adequately address environmental externalities is a tough challenge, arguably more so in Israel than in many other OECD countries.

Japanese users of the Better Life Index (BLI) worry most about safety, Australians seek work-life balance, Latin Americans strive for better education, and Danes want to be happy – user feedback shows as the Index marks its third birthday.

Smarter planning for natural and man-made disasters that increases collaboration between countries and encourages households and businesses to take more responsibility would improve resilience and reduce future economic losses, a new OECD report says.

This is the spring 2014 edition of the regional development policy newsletter.

Greece could save its businesses hundreds of millions of euros a year and improve their competitiveness by reducing administrative burdens, according to a new OECD report.

Whistleblowing is an essential element for safeguarding the public interest and for promoting a culture of public accountability and integrity. The majority of OECD countries have recently passed legislation protecting whistleblowers and yet, despite being high on the agenda, successful whistleblowing stories are rare.

The Municipality of Hermosillo in Mexico shows a 12% progress in the implementation of OECD recommendations to simplify formalities to boost entrepreneurship and create employment.

Jointly organised by the OECD, Duke University and IRGC, this international conference will identify, evaluate and discuss the relevance and effectiveness of new approaches to improving risk governance, both as they result from responding to and learning from crises, and as deliberate innovations in how regulatory power is exercised and shared.

Korea has made significant progress towards decentralising the management of employment and training programmes, but can still do more to create stronger links with employers at the local level, according to a new OECD report.

Webinar presenting OECD’s and UNEP’s Compendium of Best Practices in Green Public Procurement

The second progress report in the implementation of regulatory improvement actions shows a 52% progress for the Municipality of Hermosillo.

The OECD Port-Cities Programme aims to identify how ports can be assets for urban development. The programme therefore assesses the impact of ports on cities and regions. It also compares policies aimed at increasing positive regional impacts of ports and limiting negative effects.

This working paper takes a comparative snapshot of social media use in and by OECD governments. The focus is on government institutions, as opposed to personalities, and how they manage to capture the opportunities of new social media platforms to deliver better public services and to create more open policy processes.

This report documents procurement regulations and practices in Mexico's main electricity company (Comisión Federal de Electricidad) and makes policy recommendations in key procurement areas.

El Gobierno de México solicitó a la OCDE un Estudio sobre Políticas de Integridad, concentrado en el combate a la corrupción, la prevención de conflictos de interés y la integridad en el servicio público.

This Recommendation provides clear and effective guidance on how to implement a public procurement system that uses state-of-the-art tools and techniques to use public funds sustain-ably and efficiently.

Hermosillo scores 96% in implementing the recommendations of the Guide on improving the regulatory quality of formalities at the municipal level

This conference provided a multi-disciplinary forum to discuss issues of regulatory reform involving both government and non-government actors.

Blog article by Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director of Transparency International, written for the OECD Integrity Forum 2015.

This review particularly recommends shifting away from income taxation to indirect taxation, for instance by raising more revenue from the Goods and Services Tax.

The tax on immovable property recently started to regain its former significance, but the tax yield still remains low, with slightly more than 1% of GDP and wide variation across countries.

As the OECD celebrates its 10th Rural Conference this edition will look at the next steps for the OECD Rural Policy Programme and consider the direction for future work.

In January of this year I visited the Mexican state of Tabasco– a state crossed by rivers and facing the Gulf of Mexico. The state’s population has doubled over the past 30 years and its economy relies heavily on oil and natural gas resources. It has its challenges as well: unemployment, poverty and a lack of resources.

This paper contributes to the scarce literature on the macroeconomic effects of property taxes, in particular on the relationships between property taxes, house prices and the wider economy.

Ministers from OECD’s 34 member countries today welcomed the new OECD Principles on Water Governance, which set standards for more effective, efficient and inclusive design and implementation of water policies, and encouraged governments to put them into action.

Newsletter for OECD Regional Development Policy giving an overview of projects from January-June 2015.

Launch of the OECD programme for regulatory improvement in the Municipality of Torreon, Mexico.

The Municipality of San Luis Potosi scores an 87% progress in implementing the OECD Guide to Improve the Quality of State and Municipal Regulations.

Governments should set prudent debt targets to ensure that public finances serve to promote economic growth and stability, according to new OECD research.

The objective of this paper is to define long-run prudent debt targets for OECD countries and country-specific fiscal rules. To this end, a semi-structural macroeconomic model for OECD countries and primary balance reaction functions are estimated.

This working paper explores avenues to improve public sector efficiency in Latvia, a catching-up and ageing economy where spending needs are large.

With gross government debt of 226% of GDP, Japan’s fiscal situation is in uncharted territory and puts the economy at risk. Japan needs a detailed and credible fiscal consolidation plan, including specific revenue increases and measures to control spending to restore its fiscal sustainability.

The FAO, OECD and UNCDF launched a joint multi-year initiative to assess Food Security and Nutrition (FSN) policies from a territorial perspective. This joint initiative will assess, scale up, and pilot innovative policy approaches and governance mechanisms to improve food security and nutrition in rural areas, in both emerging and developing countries.

The Governance Practitioner’s Notebook takes an unusual approach for the OECD-DAC Network on Governance (GovNet). It brings together a collection of specially written notes aimed at those who work as governance practitioners within development agencies.

Brazil has made significant progress in building a reputation for sound fiscal policy since it passed the Fiscal Responsibility Law in 2000. In recent years, however, the fiscal situation has become more difficult as public spending and gross debt have risen.

This paper examines the potential contribution of RIA to better incorporating the inclusive growth perspective in regulatory decision-making.

OECD countries have agreed to work towards greater gender equality in public life – including in governments, parliaments and judiciaries – with concrete measures to improve women’s access to leadership and decision-making roles and integrate more of a gender perspective into public policies.

Paris, 8 March 2016: Organised on International Women's Day, the OECD hosted a conference to consider policy approaches to closing leadership gender gaps in the public and corporate sectors.

Blog article on the complex and multi-dimensional challenges faced by city policy-makers in addressing urban issues at all levels of government.

Chile has improved its regulatory policy in recent years, but could see benefits from further measures and a comprehensive effort to improve the way it prepares and issues new laws and regulations, according to a new OECD report.

Launch of the OECD review of the risk management policies in Morocco. The review provides an objective assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Morocco's risk management policies by international experts.

14-16 June 2016, Paris: The OECD hosted an International Anti-Corruption Conference organised by the French Ministry of Justice, and with the support of the World Bank and the United Kingdom. This conference brought together representatives from anti-corruption authorities worldwide responsible for investigating and prosecuting corruption.

Ministers and high-level representatives from 41 countries and the European Union committed today at the closure of the OECD’s 2016 Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting in Cancun, Mexico, to work together to preserve an open Internet, close digital divides, promote digital skills and generally do more to seize the potential of the digital economy.

The Municipality of Torreon sets the foundations to address and implement the 267 recommendations delivered by the OECD in February 2016

Forum promoting policy exchange on the increasing strategic approach of Innovation Procurement. This forum provided a space for policy makers and leaders in public procurement to share knowledge and good practices in transforming procurement into a strategic function.

The OECD and the Greek Government, with the support of the European Commission, today launched a collaboration project to strengthen Greece’s action plan to fight corruption.

Online resource to help implement the OECD Recommendation on Public Procurement. This website provides policy tools, country examples and indicators to measure public procurement systems.

The public consultation took place from 1 August to 31 October 2016.

The role of international organisations (IOs) is critical in the development of rules and standards that can help advance the well-being of citizens in an increasingly globalised world.