PARIS - The OECD Development Co-operation Report 2021: Shaping a Just Digital Transformation makes the case for choosing to hardwire inclusion into digital technology processes and emerging norms and standards.
It draws lessons from the OECD’s Going Digital project, which fosters integrated and principles-based policy making to ensure inclusive digital transformations, strengthen institutional and regulatory frameworks of digital governance, and promote growth and well-being.
Abstract
Digital transformation holds great promise for development, spurring innovation that can improve the lives of people worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic showcased the potential of digital technologies to help manage crises and support resilience. It also raised concerns with data governance and privacy and underscored the need for integrated and agile policy. Comprehensive policy approaches are needed to address interrelated challenges such as digital security and taxation. Policy making also must be agile to accompany rapid technological change and manage the risks. This chapter highlights lessons from the OECD’s Going Digital project, which fosters integrated and principles-based policy making that ensures inclusive digital transformations, strengthens institutional and regulatory frameworks of digital governance, and promotes growth and well-being.
Key messages
- Availability and use of digital technologies varies significantly: In 2020, fixed broadband penetration in OECD countries was 33 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, versus 11.9 in non-OECD countries.
- Policies that spur investment and increase competition in broadband networks are essential to boosting connectivity, closing digital divides, and unlocking the benefits of digital transformation.
- Digital transformation cuts across traditional sectoral boundaries necessitating a whole-of-government approach to realise its potential and to manage trade-offs across policy areas.
- Agile, principles-based policies are needed to adapt to rapid technological change. The success of these policies relies on regular monitoring, including through the cross-country comparison enabled by the OECD Going Digital Toolkit and the OECD AI Policy Observatory.
More and more economic and social activities around the world are digital and data driven, fundamentally altering how people live, work, interact, transact and engage with their government. These changes, often collectively referred to as digital transformation, hold great promise to spur innovation, boost efficiencies, and improve economic growth and well-being. Digital transformation, however, also restructures firms and markets, raising policy concerns related to privacy, security and inclusion.
As data, information and ideas flow easily across borders, increasing digitalisation raises global concerns as well. The pace of change is only accelerating. The COVID-19 pandemic has further moved activities on line and placed new demands on networks, highlighting both opportunities and challenges accompanying digital transformation.
While countries are at different stages of digital transformation, common challenges and themes have emerged as important areas for policy action. As a first step, for instance, policy makers should ensure reliable connectivity, as this enables interactions between people, organisations and machines – a basic precondition for digital transformation. OECD countries’ experiences also suggest that in addition to high-quality communication infrastructures and services, principles-based and integrated policies are important to shape an inclusive digital transformation.
Finally, digital transformation has global implications that call for international collaboration. As commerce becomes increasingly digital and global, for example, new approaches are needed – both to govern international data flows, which underlie the increasingly global digital trade, while upholding privacy (Casalini and López González, 2019[1]), and to manage digital security risk, which can easily spread across borders through global firms and value chains (OECD, 2015[2]; 2019[3]).
Digital transformation is particularly salient for the OECD, a forum for international policy-making discussions on such issues as global taxation, international trade, digital security and development co-operation. In light of the rapid changes underway, these policy challenges have taken on new urgency. Notably through the Going Digital project (Box 9.1), the OECD is providing tools and evidence to help policy makers design holistic approaches and sound digital economy and data governance policies that will promote growth and enhance well-being in the digital era.
