The next few decades hold the prospect of remarkable progress in a wide range of pervasive technologies that are likely to have a profound effect on how we live, work, and spend our leisure time. These technologies are set to revolutionise the worlds of medicine, agriculture, travel, retailing...so much that is familiar in our daily lives. Used wisely, they could be of huge benefit to mankind. Used wrongly, they could mean lost opportunities and unnecessary risks.
The challenge for society is immense. What would be the cost of failure to embrace dynamic change? What kind of ethical dilemmas will arise from further breakthroughs in genetic engineering? Will the spread of new technologies create new social divisions? What sort of societies will prove most adept at harnessing the vast technological potential? How can countries best co-operate to maximise the benefits of spillovers?
This book reviews the extraordinary promise of technological advances over the next twenty years or so, and assesses some of the key issues -- economic, social, environmental, ethical -- that decision-makers in government, business and society will face in the decades ahead.
What is driving recent growth in OECD countries? Why is it that their levels of GDP per capita are no longer converging? Why is it that some countries, operating at the technological frontier, where advances are difficult, appear to be widening the gap? Whether or not it is appropriate to speak of a "new economy", innovation and technology play crucial roles.
This study shows that success requires not some silver bullet, but a range of complementary factors that support the innovation-intensive growth exemplified by new information and communication technologies such as the Internet and Internet applications like electronic commerce. Supportive policies include those favourable to innovative start-ups and to financial systems able to support them, those that facilitate the reorganisation required to reap the full benefits of ICT, regulatory and institutional frameworks that facilitate links between science and industry, and efforts to train and obtain the necessary human capital, as well as public support for basic scientific research. While this study is far from exhaustive, it represents an important step in understanding the conditions under which economies flourish.
Three billion people live in rural areas in developing countries. Conditions for them are worse than for their urban counterparts when measured by almost any development indicator, from extreme poverty, to child mortality and access to electricity and sanitation. And the gulf is widening, contributing to large-scale migration to urban areas. This situation exists despite half a century of rural development theories and approaches, and despite the global momentum built around the Millennium Development Goals between 2000 and 2015. Without greater progress on rural development, it is unlikely that the new Sustainable Development Goals will be met. This book calls for a new paradigm for rural development that is equipped to meet the challenges and harness the opportunities of the 21st century – including climate change, demographic shifts, international competition and fast-moving technological change.
Prepared by the OECD’s Competition Committee, this report focuses on the telecommunications industry and seeks to deepen the understanding of access regulation. Access issues are not easy issues for regulators and competition policy-makers - they can be both difficult technically and the source of noisy disputes in practice. By bringing together theory and practice, this report seeks to help regulators and policy-makers learn from OECD experience to achieve efficient and competitive outcomes.
Africa’s Development Dynamics uses lessons learned in the continent’s five regions – Central, East, North, Southern and West Africa – to develop policy recommendations and share good practices. Drawing on the most recent statistics, this analysis of development dynamics attempts to help African leaders reach the targets of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 at all levels: continental, regional, national and local.
The 2021 edition, now published at the beginning of the year, explores how digitalisation can create quality jobs and contribute to achieving Agenda 2063, thereby making African economies more resilient to the global recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The report targets four main policy areas for Africa’s digital transformation: bridging the digital divide; supporting local innovation; empowering own-account workers; and harmonising, implementing and monitoring digital strategies. This edition includes a new chapter examining how to finance Africa’s development despite the 2020 global economic crisis.
Africa’s Development Dynamics feeds into a policy debate between the African Union’s governments, citizens, entrepreneurs and researchers. It aims to be part of a new collaboration between countries and regions, which focuses on mutual learning and the preservation of common goods. This report results from a partnership between the African Union Commission and the OECD Development Centre.
Online platforms support so many of our daily activities that we have become dependent on them in our personal and professional lives. We rely on them to buy and sell goods and services, to find information online and to keep in touch with each other. We use them for entertainment, news, transportation, accommodation, finding jobs and employees, finding apps and for many other purposes. Online platforms have also raised new and important policy questions, but the businesses themselves can be more complex than they appear so they are not always well understood. This report contains detailed profiles of twelve of the world’s leading platform companies and derives insights from those profiles about what platforms actually do, how they do it, and why they succeed financially. For example, the report finds that although platforms tend to have a number of economic characteristics in common, they also vary so greatly that they cannot be compartmentalised into just a few categories, let alone a single sector. Moreover, they do not all succeed for the same reasons. In addition, although the major Chinese platforms still have a low profile within the OECD, they are in the process of expanding globally and deserve more attention.
ICT has profound implications for education, both because ICT can facilitate new forms of learning and because it has become important for young people to master ICT in preparation for adult life. But how extensive is access to ICT in schools and informal settings and how is it used by students?
Drawing on data from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Are Students Ready for a Technology-Rich World? What PISA Studies Tell Us, examines whether access to computers for students is equitable across countries and student groups; how students use ICT and what their attitudes are towards ICT; the relationship between students’ access to and use of ICT and their performance in PISA 2003; and the implications for educational policy.
This finding has important implications for policy and practice. Governments should make an effort to clearly convey the message that computer use matters for the education of young people and do their best to engage teachers and schools in raising the frequency of computer use to a level that becomes relevant. If schools and teachers are really committed to the development of 21st century competencies, such an increase will happen naturally. And only in these circumstances will clear correlations between technology use and educational performance emerge.
The rapid advances of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years have led to numerous creative applications in science. Accelerating the productivity of science could be the most economically and socially valuable of all the uses of AI. Utilising AI to accelerate scientific productivity will support the ability of OECD countries to grow, innovate and meet global challenges, from climate change to new contagions.
This publication is aimed at a broad readership, including policy makers, the public, and stakeholders in all areas of science. It is written in non-technical language and gathers the perspectives of prominent researchers and practitioners. The book examines various topics, including the current, emerging, and potential future uses of AI in science, where progress is needed to better serve scientific advancements, and changes in scientific productivity.
Additionally, it explores measures to expedite the integration of AI into research in developing countries.
A distinctive contribution is the book’s examination of policies for AI in science. Policy makers and actors across research systems can do much to deepen AI’s use in science, magnifying its positive effects, while adapting to the fast-changing implications of AI for research governance.
The artificial intelligence (AI) landscape has evolved significantly from 1950 when Alan Turing first posed the question of whether machines can think. Today, AI is transforming societies and economies. It promises to generate productivity gains, improve well-being and help address global challenges, such as climate change, resource scarcity and health crises. Yet, as AI applications are adopted around the world, their use can raise questions and challenges related to human values, fairness, human determination, privacy, safety and accountability, among others. This report helps build a shared understanding of AI in the present and near-term by mapping the AI technical, economic, use case and policy landscape and identifying major public policy considerations. It is also intended to help co-ordination and consistency with discussions in other national and international fora.
This review analyses the monitoring and evaluation system of Colombia's Online Government Strategy and provides recommendations for developing an impact assessment methodology for digital government. It looks at the background, evolution and current status of the Strategy, and draws insights from the first implementation of a transitional methodology. The findings will help Colombia build the tools and capacities needed to effectively and sustainably implement its digital government strategy.
Attractiveness for investment in innovation is high on the policy agenda in many countries as innovation is a key factor of growth and competitiveness in OECD countries. Virtually all governments are keen to attract international investment by multinational enterprises (MNEs) as a means to promote growth and employment, create new jobs and bring in new technologies.
While all countries and regions have some policy measures in place that are aimed at increasing their attractiveness for innovation, it is less clear if these policies are effective.
This report analyses the current trends in international investment in innovation and the attractiveness policies already implemented. These are often based on the more traditional instruments for attracting international investment. The book also explores in more detail the role of investment incentives that governments tend to give to international investors: their rationale, their impact and their usefulness.
The evidence presented in this report raises clear policy issues and questions existing policies. A number of policy principles are formulated to guide policy makers.
Stronger interactions between science and industry underpin growth in a knowledge economy. A comparison of the intensity and quality of industry-science relationships (ISR) in OECD countries shows that many countries are lagging behind in mobilising science for innovation. The report benchmarks OECD countries’ ISR, identifies relevant good practices in managing the interface between public research and the business sector, and provides a framework for monitoring and assessing evolving policies in the area.
The report presents an in-depth comparative study of ISR in France and the United Kingdom and a special chapter on Japan.
This Review focuses on improving access to quality and timely services for citizens as a means to facilitate inclusive growth in the Dominican Republic. Despite its macroeconomic performance in the last decade, poverty and levels of inequalities remain high in the Dominican Republic. At the same time, citizens report limited satisfaction with the quality and access to services in the country, often reflected in less than optimal outcomes in areas such as health, transport or education. The review's focus on service delivery offers the opportunity to apply the concepts and tools of public governance at an operational level and with immediate implications for the government-citizen relationship. The inclusion of multidisciplinary good practices, collected through OECD work on public sector management, digital government, innovation or administrative simplification, allows a comprehensive but integrated assessment of the use of public policy levers for optimizing service design and delivery. By covering aspects relating both to the competence of government – in terms of the quality, timeliness and effectiveness of public services – and to the principles governing the provision of services – including engagement, accountability or inclusiveness, this review identifies policy recommendations to improve access, coverage and quality of public services, regardless of income levels, location and other social and economic factors – as a key lever to achieve more inclusive growth.
Recognising both the complexity of skills policies and the potential for peer learning, the OECD has developed a global Skills Strategy that helps countries to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their national skills systems, benchmark them internationally, and develop policies that can transform better skills into better jobs, economic growth and social inclusion. This book presents a strategy that will help countries reach the goal of having and making the best use of a high-quality pool of skills. The OECD Skills Strategy shifts the focus from traditional measures of skills, such as years of initial education and training or qualifications attained, to a much broader perspective that includes the skills people can acquire, use and maintain–and also lose–over a whole lifetime. Without sufficient investment in skills, people languish on the margins of society, technological progress does not translate into economic growth, and countries can no longer compete in an increasingly knowledge-based global society. In addition, the book points out that for skills to retain their value, they must be continuously maintained and upgraded throughout life so that people can collaborate, compete and connect in ways that drive economies and societies forward.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a severe impact on the Umbrian economy, and despite recovery of labour demand, the region faces challenges related to digitalisation, tight labour markets, and volatile demand for low-skilled jobs. To address these issues, the OECD and the Umbrian regional agency for active labour market policies (ARPAL) have collaborated to investigate the labour and skills demand of the region using big data techniques applied to online job postings. This report provides new insights into the alignment between labour and skills demand and the training options available in the training and education programmes contained in the Umbrian Regional Training Catalogue. This report builds new indicators to measure the alignment of course content with employer demands in Umbria, with results showing that alignment is relatively good for some occupations but that this can be strengthened to provide job seekers with up-to-date training options that match the demand of the labour market.
Biotechnology and the genomics revolution are changing our world’s scientific-technological and socio-economic framework. A new type of raw material – one invisible to the naked eye – will become the essential ingredient of the life sciences and biotechnology and of our future: it is the living cell – human, animal, plant or microbial – and the genes it contains. Who keeps, owns, distributes and sells this raw material? Who has access to it? What are the ethical implications of dealing with human cells and DNA? This book sheds light on many of these questions. It identifies the main challenges and how they can be met.
If present trends in fertility and life expectancy continue, between one quarter and one third of the population in OECD countries will be over 65 years by 2025. The ageing population will have profound social and economic implications. Not surprisingly, countries are searching for ways to promote healthy ageing.
The OECD Workshop on Healthy Ageing and Biotechnology, held in November 2000 in Tokyo, brought together an interdisciplinary group of world experts in molecular biology, geriatrics, epidemiology, health economics, ethics and health policy. Their perspectives are the subject of this book and collectively help provide a better understanding of the issues and relative contribution that biotechnological solutions will make to the promotion of healthy ageing.
Please note that this title is only available on line, in pdf format.
Industrial biotechnology has come of age: after decades spent in the shadow of two better-known fields, health and agro-food biotechnology, it has emerged into a world where environmental sustainability has become a global concern. However, sustainability and "clean" industrial processes will not be achieved without a stream of innovations based on science and technology, among which biotechnology will play an important role.
This report illustrates how modern process biotechnology is penetrating industrial operations, and highlights its environmental and economic advantages over other technologies. It identifies technical and other bottlenecks, but also emphasizes that industry and governments must act together to address the challenges of industrial sustainability.
Both firms, keen to improve their competitiveness, and governments, keen to exploit new sources of economic and social progress, need to understand how innovation works in order to better stimulate it. The paradox of innovation is that it uses co-operation to enhance competition and to link many different actors in innovative clusters. In a knowledge-based economy, these clusters of innovative firms form around sources of knowledge. They are based on a sophisticated infrastructure in which knowledge is developed, shared and exchanged, and are characterised by highly concentrated and effective links between entrepreneurs, investors and researchers. Clusters can take a variety of forms, depending on their main technological and commercial areas of specialisation. In most cases they operate within localised geographical areas and interact within larger innovation systems at the regional, national and international level. With globalisation, dynamic clusters are becoming key factors in a country’s capacity to attract the international investment that generates new technological expertise, to interest investors in innovation (venture capital, etc.) and to benefit from the international mobility of skilled personnel. This book reviews the latest economic research on these issues, shows how technology policy makers in OECD countries are making practical use of the concept of clusters and suggests how government policies to foster innovation might best be refocused.