Published every two years, the OECD Communications Outlook provides an extensive range of indicators for the development of different communications networks and compares performance indicators such as  revenue, investment, employment and prices for service throughout the OECD area. These indicators are essential for industry and regulators who use benchmarking to evaluate policy performance.

This edition is based on data from the OECD Telecommunications Database 2013, which provides time series of telecommunications and economic indicaors such as network dimension, revenues, investment and employment for OECD countries from 1980 to 2011. The data provided in this report map the second decade of competition for many OECD countries that fully opened their markets to competition in 1998.

Parce que l’innovation technologique peut permettre d’atteindre des objectifs environnementaux à moindre coût, il importe de comprendre en quoi l’élaboration des politiques de l’environnement et l’innovation technologique sont liées.

Cela est particulièrement vrai dans le domaine du changement climatique, où les coûts estimés de la réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre dans l’avenir dépendent en grande partie de la trajectoire technologique empruntée par l’économie. Les politiques publiques ont sans doute le pouvoir d’accélérer le développement et la diffusion des technologies d’atténuation du changement climatique et d’adaptation à ce phénomène, mais nous disposons d’encore trop peu de données concrètes et empiriques sur le sujet.

Ce rapport présente une série d’articles qui étudient dans quelle mesure l’innovation technologique peut réduire les coûts induits par la réalisation des objectifs en matière d'atténuation des changements climatiques.

The Southeast Asian (SEA) region is one of the most dynamic in the world. It is in a period of transition as its national economies become strongly integrated into global knowledge networks. Science and technology (S&T) offer opportunities for countries to ‘move up the value chain’. A better understanding of existing capabilities helps enhance mutually beneficial S&T and innovation co-operation between SEA and OECD countries.

This review provides a quantitative and qualitative assessment of Southeast Asian countries’ capacity in S&T and innovation. A regional synthesis highlights current performance and intra- and extra-regional knowledge circulation, including flows between the Southeast Asian region and the established centres of knowledge production such as the EU, Japan and the United States. The country profiles describe the dynamics of national innovation systems and their relation to international knowledge flows, taking into account the wider framework conditions for innovation.

Over the last decade Mexico has implemented a variety of policies to support business innovation. Support instruments have included direct subsidies to firms in the framework of competitive calls and R&D tax credit schemes. Specific policies have aimed at supporting public-private partnerships and technological collaboration between public research institutes and higher education institutions and enterprises. In many instances support focused on  priority sectors or technology areas, but in recent years more emphasis has been placed on support to small and medium-sized enterprises and the build-up of technology transfer capacities. This report evaluates the performance of the knowledge-based sector in Mexico and provides policy recommendations for improving the financing, creation and expansion of innovative knowledge-based start-ups.

In Colombia, the beginning of a new century has brought with it a palpable feeling of optimism. Colombians and visitors sense that the country’s considerable potential can be realised, and education is rightly seen as crucial to this process. As opportunities expand, Colombians will need new and better skills to respond to new challenges and prospects.

The government is therefore determined to address key challenges confronting tertiary education in the country: expanding enrolment and improving equity, increasing quality and relevance, and making governance and finance more responsive. Colombia has more than a decade of progress under its belt, and the energy to reach ambitious policy goals. Getting there in practice will involve dialogue and consensus-seeking among all stakeholders, as well as new resources and new rules.

Growth and diversity have characterised higher education in OECD countries for fifty years. Chile is no exception and has experienced dramatic increases in the number of students, the range of institutions and the programmes that they offer. But wider participation and diversification are only part of the story. Chilean society remains highly unequal in economic and social terms, and the quality of the academic, technical and professional programmes on offer is uneven. The establishment of a culture of quality in higher education which goes beyond accreditation, and the provision of accurate and reliable information, have become issues of concern not only to institutions, students and employers but to a wider public.

This report  analyses the performance of the relatively young higher education quality assurance system (SINAC-ES). It provides a set of key principles that the OECD review team believes both reflect international practice and are relevant for Chile. The report makes a set of recommendations about the place of the SINAC ES in Chilean higher education and society; the focus of its work; its structure and leadership; and the functions of licensing; accreditation and information that it carries out.

Researchers are embarking on increasingly diverse careers where collaboration, networking and interdisciplinarity are becoming more important. Transferable skills (e.g. communication skills and problem-solving abilities) can help researchers operate more effectively in different work environments. While researchers acquire some of these skills in the course of studies and work, attention is turning to the role of formal training.

This study analyses countries' government and institutional level policies on formal training in transferable skills for researchers, from doctoral students through to experienced research managers. It draws on results from a cross-country policy quesionnaire on transferable skills training strategies and programmes, including formal training and workplace-based options, as well as discussions at a policy-oriented workshop with OECD delegates and experts. The study represents a first step to analysing transferable skills for researchers in OECD countries.

The study points to the significant role of individual institutions in setting strategies and providing transferable skills training programmes. While the scope for governments to improve on current arrangements is difficult to assess, the study suggests policy makers could boost policy monitoring and evaluation, facilitate dialogue between academia and industry, encourage workplace-based training options, and leverage collaborative research to support transferable skills training for researchers at all levels.

Reconnaissant la complexité des politiques relatives aux compétences mais aussi la possibilité de s’inspirer de l’expérience des pairs, l’OCDE a élaboré une Stratégie sur les compétences qui aide les pays à recenser les forces et faiblesses de leurs systèmes de compétences, à comparer ces derniers à l’échelle internationale et à élaborer des politiques pour entamer un cercle vertueux où développement des compétences rime avec amélioration de l’emploi et renforcement de la croissance économique et de la cohésion sociale.

Cette publication présente une stratégie qui a pour but d’aider les pays à constituer et utiliser au mieux un vivier de compétences de grande qualité. La Stratégie de l’OCDE sur les compétences s’éloigne des mesures traditionnelles, telles que le nombre d’années passées dans l’éducation et la formation initiale ou bien les diplômes obtenus, pour adopter une perspective beaucoup plus large qui inclut les compétences que les individus peuvent acquérir, utiliser et entretenir – mais aussi perdre – tout au long de leur vie. Lorsque l’investissement dans les compétences est insuffisant, les individus restent en marge de la société, les avancées technologiques ne se traduisent pas en croissance économique et les pays perdent leur compétitivité dans une société mondiale de plus en plus fondée sur les connaissances. En outre, cette publication souligne que pour conserver leur valeur, les compétences doivent sans cesse être utilisées et mises à jour tout au long de la vie afin que les individus puissent coopérer, concourir et s’associer de façon à faire évoluer l’économie et la société.

The Internet is now a fundamental infrastructure supporting the economy and is firmly in its 2nd stage of development, having evolved from a data network connecting PCs with wires to a much broader network of new portable devices from mobile phones to tablet computers. It is also on the cusp of a much larger expansion to objects that typically did not have communications capabilities: the “Internet of things” is projected to have more connections than the people using them. This raises many important socio-economic and political issues for stakeholders to consider, as economies and societies become increasingly inter-meshed.

Supported by time series data, this publication begins with an overview of trends and highlights how the Internet sector has proven to be resilient during the recent economic crisis. It then examines the various drivers and impacts of Internet use and deployment, as well as emerging technologies, broadband, e-commerce, e-health, digital content, security and privacy, and reflects on a methodology for measuring the Internet economy.