Foreword and Acknowledgements

As “market referees”, regulators contribute to the delivery of essential public utilities. To be successful, regulators need to be constantly alert, informed by live data, checking sectoral trends and assessing the impact of their decisions. The performance of regulators is also largely determined by their internal governance ? their organisational structures, behaviour, accountability, business processes, reporting and performance management ? and external governance ? roles, relationships and distribution of powers and responsibilities with other government and non-government stakeholders. To help regulators in their quest for better performance assessment, the OECD has developed an innovative framework that looks at the internal and external institutions, processes and practices that can enhance regulators’ performance.