OECD Science, Technology and Innovation News
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23 April 2020
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Protecting privacy as we tackle COVID-19
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As COVID-19 continues to ripple across the world, many governments are turning to digital technologies to help stem the spread of the disease. Some are using geolocation data or biometrics to track and contain the spread of COVID-19, while others are developing their own mobile apps to monitor population flows and identify potential infections. These measures could play a helpful role in limiting the human and economic costs of the pandemic, yet they also raise serious concerns around privacy and data protection, as detailed in our latest COVID-19 policy briefs.
We hope that our new briefs available below will help inform governments as they work to ensure that public health is protected without sacrificing civil liberties, and look forward to facilitating greater dialogue and co-operation around these issues, as leading civil society organisations and experts have rightly called for. An unprecedented crisis may call for unprecedented measures, but we must ensure that our democratic and personal freedoms – so core to our economies and societies, and so central to trust – prevail in the long run.
Andrew Wyckoff
OECD Director for Science, Technology and Innovation
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Digital technologies will play a key role in helping scientists develop solutions to COVID-19. New results from the OECD International Survey of Scientific Authors (ISSA), provide new insights into the digital transformation of scientific research. Covering nearly 12 000 scholars across 60 countries, ISSA aims to help policy makers maximise the benefits and address the challenges associated with widespread digitalisation.
The latest results, released this month, show that over 40% of authors across all science fields use computational and simulation methods in their research work. In 2017, about 65% of all scientific publications resulted in new data or code, although open access to these outputs is still limited.
Digital platforms have also had a profound impact on the way scientists communicate their work to peers and the wider public, though there are geographic differences. Over 50% of scientific authors based in the United Kingdom and in Australia use social networks to communicate and disseminate information on their scientific work, compared to less than 30% in Russia, Germany and Japan.
The ISSA results are an open data resource, available for researchers to reproduce and explore further using anonymised survey microdata and code. |
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Measuring consumer detriment is a fundamental building block for assessing the impacts
of consumer policies and consumer agency actions. Our new digital economy paper examines possible measurement methodologies and provides practical guidance for developing and strengthening the effectiveness of consumer policymaking frameworks.
Another recent paper outlines the seven interrelated policy dimensions of the OECD Going Digital Integrated Policy Framework designed to help governments and stakeholders to develop an integrated approach to policy making in the digital age and to shape policies for an inclusive digital future. |
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The issue of space sustainability is a pressing one, with the planned and ongoing deployment of several large-scale constellations for satellite broadband. If all goes as planned, the number of operational satellites in the low-earth orbit could grow from 2 000 today to several tens of thousands. Our latest STI policy paper looks at space sustainability with a particular focus on the economics of space debris. It reviews trends in selected space sustainability issues and discusses a range of possible policy actions.
Another recent policy paper provides new evidence on the main characteristics of laggard firms – firms in the bottom 40% of productivity distribution – and their potential for productivity growth.
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| In addition to two new titles discussing the digital transformation of science and the latest findings of the OECD International Survey of Scientific Authors, our latest working papers include a look at patterns of innovation, advanced technology use and business practices in Canadian firms, and new insights on measuring employment in global value chains. |
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