Publications & Documents

Open banking allows users to access financial information and services through consent-based data portability. This paper brings together the views of private and public experts from a wide variety of countries to explore opportunities and challenges of open banking for financial regulation, privacy protection, and competition. It discusses the different approaches taken by jurisdictions across the globe, and the importance of regulation and standards. While open banking empowers users in sharing and re-using their data across digital services, online platforms, sectors and borders, uncertainty in the interactions with data protection and privacy regimes remains challenging. This paper informs OECD work to consider how cross-sectoral cooperation between financial, competition and data protection authorities could help further open banking.

The paper presents a comprehensive assessment of the strengths and limitations of the intellectual property (IP) system in Poland. It offers policy recommendations to fully exploit the potential of IP to support an innovation-based economy. It finds that the key components of an effective IP strategy in Poland should include the promotion of IP use among economic actors and other stakeholders as well as information campaigns and training programmes to raise awareness and knowledge about the advantages of IP. Recommendations also include reducing barriers to IP use by lowering the costs of and simplifying IP-related procedures, and promoting the valorisation of IP held by universities to enhance technology transfer to the business sector.

This paper uses information collected and provided by GlassAI to analyse the characteristics and activities of companies and universities in Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States that mention keywords related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) on their websites. The analysis finds that those companies tend to be young and small, mainly operate in the information and communication sector, have AI at the core of their business, and aim to provide customer solutions. It is noteworthy that the types of AI-related activities reported by them vary across sectors. Additionally, although universities are concentrated in and around large cities, this is not necessarily reflected in the intensity of AI-related activities. Taken together, this novel and timely evidence informs the debate on the most recent stages of digital transformation of the economy.

The OECD Policy Framework on Digital Security charts the economic and social dimension of cybersecurity, highlights the OECD approach to digital security policy and equips policymakers to use OECD digital security Recommendations in developing better policies. The Framework also identifies linkages with other policy areas addressed through existing OECD standards and tools. The OECD has been at the forefront of international efforts on guiding policy makers in the area of digital security since 1990 and has become the primary international standard setter in this area. OECD Recommendations on digital security support stakeholders in developing digital security policies for economic and social prosperity, in line with the OECD’s mandate to help governments develop 'better policies for better lives'.

As our online and offline lives become increasingly interwoven, policy makers have to consider how to protect individual interests and rights. This paper considers the impact of digital transformation on internationally recognised human rights, legal and constitutional rights, and domestically protected interests. It sets out three case studies, freedom of expression, privacy and Internet access, and provides a brief overview of current international and domestic initiatives to protect 'rights in the digital age'. The paper sets the scene for further discussion on the issue and supports policy makers in designing and achieving a rights-oriented and human-centric digital transformation.

Data are generated wherever digital technologies are deployed namely, in almost every part of modern life. Using these data can empower individuals, drive innovation, enable new digital products and improve policy making and public service delivery. But as data become more widely used across sectors and applications, the potential for misuse and harm also grows. To advance data governance for growth and well-being, this report advocates a holistic and coherent approach to data governance, domestically and across borders. It examines how data have emerged as a strategic asset, with the ability to transform lives and confer economic advantage. It explains how the unique characteristics of data can pose complex trade-offs and challenge policies that pre-date the data-driven era. This report provides new insights, evidence and analysis and outlines considerations for better data governance policies in the digital age.

The ubiquitous collection, use, and sharing of data that power today’s economies challenge existing governance frameworks and policy approaches. Drawing on the extensive research and analysis conducted at the OECD on data governance, on countries’ policies and practices, and the OECD legal instruments in this area, the Going Digital Guide to Data Governance Policy Making supports policy makers in navigating three fundamental policy tensions that characterise efforts to develop, revise, and implement policies for data governance across policy domains in the digital age: balancing data openness and control while maximising trust; managing overlapping and potentially conflicting interests and regulations related to data; incentivising investments in data and their effective re-use. The operative part of the guide consists of a checklist of questions to orient policy makers as they develop and revise effective policies for data governance, based on possible policy approaches and real-life examples.

Data flows are critical for our global economic and social interactions, but trust is necessary to facilitate data sharing, especially across borders. The challenge is to foster a global digital environment that enables the movement of data across international borders while ensuring that, upon crossing a border, data are granted the desired oversight and protection – a concept known as ‘data free flow with trust’ (DFFT). This report summarises how different countries and stakeholders are pursuing cross-border data flows with trust through direct and indirect approaches, across different levels, fora and policy communities. It then looks at related issues to promoting DFFT namely: interoperability of privacy and data protection frameworks; government access to personal data held by the private sector; and data localisation measures. The report shows that, although differences remain, there are commonalities, complementarities and elements of convergence that can help to build trust, foster future interoperability, and advance DFFT.

Data access, sharing and re-use ('data openness') can generate significant social and economic benefits, including addressing public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. However, data openness also comes with risks to individuals and organisations – notably risks to privacy and data protection, intellectual property rights, digital and national security. It also raises ethical concerns where data access, sharing and re-use undermine ethical values and norms. This report demonstrates how approaches to data stewardship and control that are more balanced and differentiated can maximise the benefits of data, while protecting individuals’ and organisations’ rights and taking into account other legitimate interests and public policy objectives. It presents the mix of technical, organisational and legal approaches that characterises these more balanced and differentiated approaches, and how governments have implemented them.

This paper exploits novel data on the degree of automatability of approximately 100 skills and abilities collected through an original survey of experts in AI, and link them to occupations using information on skill and ability requirements extracted from O*NET. Similar to previous studies, this allows gauging the number of jobs potentially affected by automation and the workers who are most at risk of automation. The focus on the automatability of skills and abilities as opposed to entire occupations permits a direct assessment of the share of highly automatable and bottleneck tasks in each occupation. The study finds that thanks to advances in AI and robotics, several high-level cognitive skills can now be automated. However, high-skilled occupations continue to be less at risk of automation because they also require skills and abilities that remain important bottlenecks to automation. Furthermore, jobs at highest risk of automation will not disappear completely, as only 18 to 27% of skills and abilities required in these occupations are highly automatable. Rather, the organisation of work will change and workers in these jobs will need to retrain, as technologies replace workers for several tasks.