The rapid acceleration of digital transformation has had profound implications for services trade but the benefits of digitalisation risk being derailed by existing and emerging trade barriers. The OECD Digital Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (Digital STRI) is a new tool that identifies, catalogues, and quantifies cross-cutting barriers that affect services traded digitally. It consists of two components, the regulatory database and indices, which bring together comparable information from 44 countries. The Digital STRI shows a diverse and complex global regulatory environment affecting trade in digitally enabled services. Moreover, over the past years, the indices show an increasingly tightening regulatory environment highlighting that further international cooperation and dialogue is needed to maximise the benefits of digitalisation.
