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The 2021 edition includes input indicators on public finance and employment; process indicators include data on institutions, budgeting practices, human resources management, regulatory governance, public procurement, governance of infrastructure, public sector integrity, open government and digital government. Outcome indicators cover core government results (e.g. trust, political efficacy, inequality reduction) and indicators on access, responsiveness, quality and satisfaction for the education, health and justice sectors. Governance indicators are useful for monitoring and benchmarking governments’ progress in their public sector reforms.

Artificial Intelligence has great potential in all areas of our lives, but it also presents risks for fundamental rights and the rule of law. The European Union is trying to create a balanced regulatory framework between the pros and cons of AI. On 21 April 2021 EU published a comprehensive proposal for an AI regulation, which should protect and promote European rights and values, without impeding the technological, industrial, and commercial development of AI. This article aims to give a first analysis of the proposal, focusing on its main positive and negative aspects.

Established domestic regulatory frameworks are reaching their limits to cope with today’s increasing cross-boundary policy challenges. Only united action can effectively navigate the rapid growth of economic integration and interdependencies, particularly driven by innovative technologies. Yet, contemporary regulatory frameworks tend to build on national jurisdictional boundaries constraining common solutions to meet the growing transboundary nature of policy challenges. In the aftermaths of global crises, such as the 2008 financial crisis or the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed the vulnerabilities of global health, economic and governance systems, it is time for a true paradigm shift towards more systematic consideration of the international environment in domestic regulatory frameworks. The OECD Best Practice Principles on International Regulatory Co-operation provide practical guidance supporting policymakers and civil servants in adapting regulatory frameworks to the interconnected reality. They outline key elements in defining a dedicated whole-of-government strategy and governance structure, embedding international considerations throughout the domestic regulatory design, development and delivery, and leveraging bilateral, regional and multilateral international cooperation on regulatory matters to support national policy objectives. Compiling various ways of international regulatory cooperation and experiences from countries, the OECD Best Practice Principles on International Regulatory Co-operation provide the impetus for policymakers and civil servants in a variety of legal and administrative environments on how to promote quality and resilience of regulatory frameworks in times of an increasingly interconnected world.

Over the past three decades, cyberspace has gradually become an engine of unsustainable outcomes from an economic, social and environmental perspective. The European Commission has launched several new initiatives, in the attempt to restore public control over cyberspace, remedy the distributional imbalances generated by the rise of large-scale digital platforms, and promote Europe's digital sovereignty. The paper argues that only by embedding rules and values in “code” and preserving openness towards the rest of the world will the EU manage to achieve its desired goals. Current initiatives such as the data strategy, the AI regulation, the Digital Services Act and the European Cloud Federation appear still too sparse and uncoordinated to really deliver on Europe's ambition to lead the world in the sustainable use of technology.

At the center of contemporary debates over public law lies administrative agencies’ discretion to impose rules. Yet, for every one of these rules, there are also unrules nearby. Often overlooked and sometimes barely visible, unrules are the decisions that regulators make to lift or limit the scope of a regulatory obligation, for instance through waivers, exemptions, and exceptions. In some cases, unrules enable regulators to reduce burdens on regulated entities or to conserve valuable government resources in ways that make law more efficient. However, too much discretion to create unrules can facilitate undue business influence over the law, weaken regulatory schemes, and even undermine the rule of law. In this paper, we conduct the first systematic empirical investigation of the hidden world of unrules. Using a computational linguistic approach to identify unrules across the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, and the United States Code, we show that unrules are an integral and substantial feature of the federal regulatory system. Our analysis shows that, by several conservative measures, there exists one obligation-alleviating word for approximately every five to six obligation-imposing words in federal law. We also show that unrules are surprisingly unrestrained by administrative law. In stark contrast to administrative law’s treatment of obligation-imposing rules, regulators wield substantially more discretion in deploying unrules to alleviate regulatory obligations. As a result, a major form of agency power remains hidden from view and relatively unencumbered by law. Recognizing the central role that unrules play in our regulatory system reveals the need to reorient administrative law and incorporate unrules more explicitly into its assumptions, doctrines, and procedures.

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