topic Ministry

OECD - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Members

The 34 Member States of the OECD are: the USA, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Israel,  Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Turkey and 21 of the 27 EU Member States, including Germany, which was one of the OECD's founding members. (Countries that are members of the EU but not the OECD: Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, and Cyprus.) The European Commission is also involved in the OECD's activities. Russia is expected to join in the next few years.

The emerging countries Brazil, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa (BIICS) have not yet submitted applications for accession to the OECD. In 2007, the OECD Ministerial Council moved to engage in closer cooperation with the BIICS countries, partly with a view to their future accession. The Council also decided that Southeast Asia was a region of strategic interest for the OECD in terms of attracting new Member States. Programmes for closer cooperation are currently being developed.

By intensifying its dialogue and cooperation with non-members across the world, the OECD is acquiring an increasingly global outlook.

Responsibilities

At the OECD, government representatives from the Member States come together to discuss (and, to a certain extent, coordinate) the entire spectrum of political measures on the basis of comparative analyses. Peer assessments and the mutual exchange of ideas are the OECD's main instruments for developing policies aimed at achieving the highest possible level of sustainable growth and employment and raising the standard of living.

In May 2010, the Ministerial Council welcomed a report on the OECD Innovation Strategy which it had commissioned three years earlier. The Innovation Strategy is intended to offer a joint vision for national policy development in Member States and non-Member States alike. However, the OECD recognizes that different countries are starting from very different positions.

In May 2010 the Ministerial Council welcomed the new OECD Green Growth Strategy and the Towards Green Growth report. The OECD recommends that all countries seeking new sources of growth and job creation turn to environmentally sound 'green" growth. Innovation, investment and entrepreneurship must be applied systematically to that end. Green growth is integrated ino the OECD's ongoing work, e.g. in country reports, indicators and development cooperation work.

The BMBF uses the OECD as a research and education policy forum to actively introduce regulations, topics and discussions from the national level into the international debate, to obtain scientific corroboration, and then draw conclusions for its national policy-making work.

Education

The establishment of the Directorate for Education in 2002 reflected the increasing importance of education policy within the OECD. The work programme for education-related projects is agreed in the Education Policy Committee (EDPC). The Centre for Education Research and Innovation (CERI) is in charge of a separate work programme for education policy projects which also includes societal and economic aspects. It is governed by the CERI Governing Board.

Through its participation in the relevant bodies, Germany is involved in the drafting and development of the flagship publication of the Directorate for Education: "Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators".  In addition, the BMBF publishes a document summarizing the most relevant results for Germany (see the 2011 issue, in German only). 

Germany also participates in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), the well-known international school benchmarking study in which the skills of 15-year-olds are assessed in the key areas of mathematics, reading comprehension and the natural sciences. The OECD's work attracts great interest in Germany, particularly in the context of the PISA study, and has a significant impact on the German education policy debate at a federal level. It provides the Federal Government, the Länder, and the public at large with important insights that contribute to efforts to reform the German education system.

Germany is involved in a new OECD project for the international assessment of adult competencies (PIAAC). In addition, Germany is represented in a national expert group that is involved (in an advisory capacity) in designing a feasibility study for the international assessment of learning outcomes in higher education (AHELO).

In the 2009-2010 programme phase Germany participated in the OECD "Learning for Jobs - The OECD Policy Review of Vocational Education and Training" project.
The project is a result of a decision made in 2005 by the OECD ministers of education to make vocational education and training a priority within the OECD's eduation-related activities. In this recently completed international study, the OECD carried out surveys on the vocation training systems of a total of 16 states, including Germany. The results were presented at an international conference on the future of vocational education organized by the BMBF and the OECD that took place in Leipzig in September 2010 (see Country Reports and Summaries).

Research

The OECD's Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry develops studies and science policy recommendations in selected areas of national and multinational science policy. The work programme is agreed in the Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy (CSTP), which has established the Global Science Forum (GSF), working groups on Science and Technology Indicators (NESTI), on Technology and Innovation Policy (TIP), on Biotechnology (WPB), on Nanotechnology (WPN), and on Research Institutions and Human Resources (RIHR), as well as a Steering Group on Governance of International Cooperation on Science, Technology and Innovation for Global Challenges (STIG). Germany is currently represented in all of the working groups. Each of them carries out a number of multinational projects. For example, the German and the Spanish delegations in the GSF initiated a project on "Facilitating Cooperation in International Non-Commercial Clinical Trials". The GSF published studies on the establishment of large-scale international research infrastructures and on research collaborations between industrialized and less developed countries in 2011.

Germany is also involved in the drafting of the flagship publication -  "Science, Technology and Industry (STI) Outlook" - which is issued every two years. The six emerging economies Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa are included. The latest edition of the OECD's STI Outlook, issued in December 2010 and also translated into German, includes:

• An analysis of the key global trends and developments in science, research and  innovation
• A comparative analysis of trends in the national science and innovation policies of the OECD Member States and the countries selected for closer cooperation
• Short country notes with information on the strengths and weaknesses of each country

The Federal Government's Strategy for the Internationalization of Science and Research has included plans for increased cooperation between Germany and developing and emerging countries since 2008. The OECD has also recently started putting more emphasis on the importance of innovation for developing and emerging countries. In this context, the OECD has carried out joint events with the World Bank and with UNESCO.

Current Developments

The OECD's Directorate for Education is currently preparing a new project in the area of vocational training. Entitled "Skills beyond School", it will mainly focus on the availability, quality, and relevance of further training opportunities  in the phase following initial vocational training. The Federal Government and the Länder will be involved in the study, which is planned to run for two years (2011/2012).

Germany has a special interest in questions relating to the governance of multinational research cooperation. In its Internationalization Strategy, the Federal Government reaffirmed its intention to intensify research cooperation in order to solve global challenges. At Germany's initiative, the OECD started a comprehensive activity in 2009. The aim of the project is to build up an international research network with a view to gaining scientific insights on the forms of multilateral cooperation in research, technology and innovation that are particularly suitable for tackling global challenges such as climate change, energy shortages, food crises or infectious diseases that spread across international borders. Based on these scientific insights, the OECD Council at Ministerial Level will develop recommendations on multilateral research cooperation starting in 2012. The German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) is in charge of the scientific coordination of the research network and of the German expert contribution, with financial support from the BMBF.

The OECD Global Forum on the Knowledge Economy "Better Innovation Policies for Better Lives" has opened up new prospects for OECD activities in the sciences.

The BMBF invited the OECD Global Science Forum GSF to hold its 25th session in Berlin on 27 and 28 October 2011.

The BMBF, the Japanese Ministry of Research MEXT and the Sea-EU-NET network established under the 7th EU Research Framework Programme, will jointly fund an OECD study on the innivation systems in Southeast Asia, due for publicationwhich is to be completed in 2011.