Value-added estimates are a significant improvement upon measures of school performance currently used in most education systems across OECD countries. They provide a fundamentally more accurate and valuable quantitative basis for school improvement planning, policy development and for enacting...

Infrastructure sectors -- particularly railroads, telecommunications, electricity and natural gas -- are vital in providing necessities of life to the Russian Federation’s citizens and key inputs into the rest of the economy. A top priority of the current government in Russia is to reform the...

The international community is committed to helping partner countries meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving global poverty by 2015. Effective use of scarce official development assistance is one important contribution to this end. The good practices presented here represent a set of...

While defining appropriate roles for political advisers is a highly relevant topic in most democracies and especially in EU NMS, as well as candidate and CARDS countries today, surprisingly little comparative information exists. To fill this gap, in Autumn 2005, the Sigma Programme launched a...