Getting information and communications “right” has always been a necessary condition for delivering sound policy advice; today, there are many more possibilities to generate and to share evidence-based policy insights, but there are also many more competing messages and messengers. Here are two examples.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría has congratulated Barack Obama on his re-election as US president. Mr Gurría said the OECD was proud to have worked with President Obama and his team over the past four years, both on the home front and in international fora such as the G8 and G20 (our photo).

Two years after Israel joined the OECD, Sharon Kedmi, Director General at the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, is leading a delegation to an important OECD Employment Labour and Social Affairs Committee meeting on 26 October. He spoke with the OECD Observer.

Permanent Representative of Japan to the OECD, Ambassador Motohide Yoshikawa, conferred honours on Roger Charles Harmel, former director of Council and the Executive Committee secretariat at the OECD, at a special ceremony held at the ambassador’s residence on 7 December 2011.

Thomas Bata, owner of the global shoe corporation that bears his name, died in Toronto on 1 September, aged 93. A founding father of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD (BIAC) in 1962, Mr Bata served as BIAC chairman from 1968-1970, and remained active in the organisation, chairing BIAC’s non-member committee at the time of his death.

Alex King, a much-admired director of the OECD, passed away on 28 February 2007. He was 98. Now that the OECD has gone “global”, it is worth remembering that Alex King was also the founder, in cooperation with Aurelio Peccei, of the Club of Rome, which first put the spotlight on the crisis of globalisation (notably in a report published in 1972 entitled The Limits to Growth*).