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Definition
Best practice is used as a standard that organisations may strive to achieve in their particular domain. Best practices are not regulatory standards, although they can complement regulations. They can also refer to the process of developing and following a standard way of doing things that many organisations can use. They evolve as improvements are discovered or new knowledge is gained.
Best practices can be identified by benchmarking, or they may be voluntary standards that are established by trade, industry, professional or international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) or the [link new-window title="International%20Organisation%20for%20Standardisation" link="https%3A%2F%2Fwww.iso.org%2F" icon="external-link" /]
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Nearly every industry and professional discipline uses best practice (e.g. software development, construction, transport, business management, sustainable development, various aspects of project management, health care, insurance, sales, manufacturing, water and waste management).
In the public domain, the OECD publishes [link new-window title="best%20practice%20and%20guidelines" link="https%3A%2F%2Fwww.oecd.org%2Fgovernance%2Fpublicationsdocuments%2Fbestpracticesguidelines%2F" icon="external-link" /]
on various policies (for example, on budget transparency, education, evaluation, impact assessments, improving the quality of government, contracting out government, biotechnology, security of information systems, etc).
Best practice can be used in audits to determine the audit criteria by which the audited entity / programme / project can be judged. What is considered an element of good performance may be subjective.
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