As “market referees”, regulators contribute to the delivery of essential public utilities. Their organisational culture, behaviour, actions and governance are important factors in how they, and the sectors they oversee, perform. The OECD Performance Assessment Framework for Economic Regulators (PAFER) looks at the institutions, processes and practices that can create an organisational culture of performance and results. This report uses PAFER to assess both the internal and external governance of Brazil’s National Agency for Water and Basic Sanitation (ANA). The review offers recommendations for the regulator to build upon its strong technical reputation and good practices. It proposes an integrated set of recommendations to help ANA best fulfil its roles relating to water resource management and water-use regulation, dam safety, and water supply and sanitation.

With contributions from several Asia-Pacific countries, this book compares performance and productivity in higher education from the perspective of institutional change. Using multiple methods and datasets and including case studies from Australia, Cambodia, China, Malaysia, India and Japan, the authors focus on shedding light on the efficacy of institutional policies and reforms. The worldwide Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education neared 40 per cent in 2020 due to the dramatic increase in enrolments in many developing economies, especially in Asia. This significant increase in the number of students in higher education brings great benefits but requires major ongoing investment by governments around the world. This growth has followed waves of internationalization and marketization, and universities are undergoing substantial change in their organization and character. The goal of many institutional policies and reforms has been better performance and higher productivity. Yet little is known about whether they have achieved this aim. Students, government officials and university leaders all have the right to ask whether the outcomes of higher education justify the costs of running the system. Although increasing attention has been paid to higher education institutions’ management and operation, the study of higher education performance and productivity is still in its relative infancy compared to other enterprises. Written for students and scholars interested in higher education management and productivity, this book will also appeal to government officials and university leaders keen to know more about institutional reform and how to achieve better performance.

Maintaining the United States' strong lead in information technology will require continued federal support of research in this area, most of which is currently funded under the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative (HPCCI). The Initiative has already accomplished a great deal and should be continued. This book provides 13 major recommendations for refining both HPCCI and support of information technology research in general. It also provides a good overview of the development of HPCC technologies.

Industrial Environmental Performance Metrics is a corporate-focused analysis that brings clarity and practicality to the complex issues of environmental metrics in industry. The book examines the metrics implications to businesses as their responsibilities expand beyond the factory gateâ€"upstream to suppliers and downstream to products and services. It examines implications that arise from greater demand for comparability of metrics among businesses by the investment community and environmental interest groups. The controversy over what sustainable development means for businesses is also addressed. Industrial Environmental Performance Metrics identifies the most useful metrics based on case studies from four industriesâ€"automotive, chemical, electronics, and pulp and paperâ€"and includes specific corporate examples. It contains goals and recommendations for public and private sector players interested in encouraging the broader use of metrics to improve industrial environmental performance and those interested in addressing the tough issues of prioritization, weighting of metrics for meaningful comparability, and the longer term metrics needs presented by sustainable development.