8.3 Best practices for organizing public reports OSCE reports most often take the form of public reporting to a wide range of institutions, officials, and international and national organizations. Such wide distribution of public reports serves the practical function of providing a common foundation of objective information on the functioning of the criminal justice system to all stakeholders. Although reports may differ in content, all reports aim to present monitoring results and conclusions in a manner that both informs and influences policy makers and officials, institutions, and legal actors to take specific actions. The following provides some specific guidance and best practices in connection with organizing basic components of a trial-monitoring report. Introduction. The introduction is the first opportunity to inform the reader about the domestic legal context and the role of the monitoring programme. At a minimum, an introduction should provide: • An overview of the domestic legal context, including international commitments, recent reforms or events, and other issues and events that provide the backdrop to monitoring; • The purpose and role of monitoring with reference to this context, including who findings are addressed to, and what the report seeks to achieve by publishing the findings and recommendations; • The legal basis for conducting monitoring, including the OSCE mandate, OSCE commitments, and/or the right to a public trial under domestic and international law; • An overview of the structure of the report, including what topics will be covered. Methodology. A description of monitoring methodology is critical to the credibility of findings. Trial-monitoring findings and conclusions will often be the only objective overview of what is occurring in the criminal justice system in places where information is often incomplete, anecdotal, or politicized. A report must thoroughly establish the validity of the methodology that produced the information in the report and apprise the reader that such information is reliable and objective. This should include: • An overview of the scope of monitoring, including numbers and types of cases, courts, and hearings monitored; • A description of monitoring methodology, including how the information was obtained and what proceedings were monitored. Further, it should be made clear what findings resulted from direct observation, from document review, or were obtained from secondary sources such as interviews or court statistics; • A description of who performed the monitoring, including the qualifications and training of monitors. Trial-Monitoring: A Reference Manual for Practitioners 109