By Date

The digital environment presents a wide range of benefits to children, whilst also exposing them to various risks, including cyberbullying, harmful content and inappropriate contact with strangers. This report provides an overview of the legal and policy actions that governments, international organisations and other stakeholders have taken to ensure a safe and beneficial digital environment for children. It considers actions taken to keep pace with technological developments, to ensure children can realise the benefits of the digital environment, and to respond to the changing digital risk landscape. The report also informed the revision of the 2012 OECD Recommendation of the Council on the Protection of Children Online, which aims to bring it into line with current and anticipated future needs of children in the digital environment.

This paper identifies and measures developments in science, algorithms and technologies related to artificial intelligence (AI). Using information from scientific publications, open source software (OSS) and patents, it finds a marked increase in AI-related developments over recent years. Since 2015, AI-related publications have increased by 23% per year; from 2014 to 2018, AI-related OSS contributions grew at a rate three times greater than other OSS contributions; and AI-related inventions comprised, on average, more than 2.3% of IP5 patent families in 2017. China’s growing role in the AI space also emerges. The analysis relies on a three-pronged approach based on established bibliometric and patent-based methods, and machine learning (ML) implemented on purposely collected OSS data.

In increasingly knowledge-based societies and economies, data are a key resource. Enhanced access to publicly funded data enables research and innovation, and has far-reaching effects on resource efficiency, productivity and competitiveness, creating benefits for society at large. Yet these benefits must also be balanced against associated risks to privacy, intellectual property, national security and the public interest. This report presents current policy practice to promote access to publicly funded data for science, technology and innovation, as well as policy challenges for the future. It examines national policies and international initiatives, and identifies seven issues that require policy attention.

This publication presents the findings of the OECD review of SME and entrepreneurship policy in Brazil. SMEs play an important role for economic growth and social inclusion in Brazil, accounting for 62% of total employment and 50% of national value added. However, productivity gaps between SMEs and large companies are wider in Brazil than in the OECD area, which is also the result of low innovation and export propensity among Brazilian SMEs. Business ownership and business creation are common, but growth-oriented entrepreneurship is much less widespread. Brazil’s SME policy is enshrined in the 1988 Federal Constitution, which grants to micro and small enterprises a preferential treatment in different policy areas (e.g. tax and labour law). Brazilian SME policies are, therefore, mostly aimed at this constituency, whereas mid-sized firms are largely missing in the national policy debate. Simples Nacional, a preferential tax and regulatory regime, is the main federal SME policy, but Brazil also operates a large number of targeted programmes for SMEs. This report provides policy recommendations to enhance Brazil’s SME and entrepreneurship performance, covering, among others, innovation policy, export support, access to finance, and women’s entrepreneurship.

This paper examines possible methodologies for estimating consumer detriment, as well as the impacts of consumer agency actions and consumer policy more broadly. It also provides practical guidance for developing and strengthening the effectiveness of consumer policymaking frameworks. The report was prepared to inform a project by the OECD Committee on Consumer Policy (CCP) to explore ways to ensure that consumer policymaking is based on the best available data on likely costs and benefits.

This technical paper describes the methodology and main features of the second pilot of the OECD International Survey of Scientific Authors (ISSA2). ISSA2 was carried out in 2018 to provide evidence on the nature and effects of digitalisation in science. This paper describes the key design and implementation feature of the ISSA2 online survey. It also provides an overview of the data collected focusing on the profiles of the survey respondents in relation to the broader population they represent. This aims to guide third-party research use of the data and code made openly available under two different access regimes.

This paper presents the results of the 2018 OECD International Survey of Scientific Authors (ISSA2), a global online survey designed and implemented to measure the key features of the digital transformation of science. The paper explores the potential impacts of digitalisation based on a combination of different indicators on research impact and responses from nearly 12 000 authors across the world. The evidence shows that although digital activity is pervasive, the transformation is uneven across fields and sectors, and is influenced by factors such as norms, experience, skills and data availability. Overall, scientists appear to be optimistic about the potential of digitalisation, especially in relation to the efficiency of research and collaboration across national borders. This paper is also the first analysis to leverage a new OECD approach to data collection in priority science policy topics for which evidence might be scarce or insufficiently timely.

This paper explores selected long-term sustainability issues related to increasing activities in outer space, with a particular focus on the economics of space debris. It reviews trends of selected space sustainability issues and discusses a range of possible policy actions. A notable policy response would be to strengthen space situational awareness systems and data reporting structures, while addressing operator compliance behaviour at both the national and international levels. Adequately addressing these challenges will require a reinforced coordinated international approach, in addition to increased collaboration with the private sector.