Going Digital: Shaping Policies, Improving Lives: main recommendations

These are the main recommendation of the document Shaping Policies, Improving Lives from OCDE.

It identifies seven policy dimensions that allow governments – together with citizens, firms and stakeholders – to shape digital transformation and improve lives:

1)    Access to communications infrastructures, services and data

To enhance access to networks, services and data, governments should lower barriers to trade and investment, promote competition, simplify administrative procedures, and boost connectivity in rural and remote areas.

2)    Effective use of digital technologies and data;

To increase effective use, policies should empower everyone with a mix of skills to thrive and trust in a digital world; boost adoption and diffusion of digital tools to drive productivity growth in firms, and small and medium‑sized enterprises in particular; promote business dynamism and structural change; foster investment in intangible assets (e.g. patents, software); and make digital government services more user‑centred.

3)    Data‑driven and digital innovation

To unleash digital innovation, policies should promote entrepreneurship; facilitate access to finance; support basic research, knowledge diffusion and open science; and open up government data. Policies should also encourage experimentation and new business models across sectors, including by promoting the flexible application or enforcement of regulation (e.g. regulatory sandboxes)

4)    Jobs

To ensure good jobs for all, we must get ready for a massive training challenge. Policies need to facilitate successful and fair transitions into new jobs and prepare for changes to existing ones by striking a balance between flexibility and mobility, on the one hand, and job stability on the other, including through social dialogue. Polices must also empower people with the mix of skills needed to succeed, improve social protection to ensure no one is left behind and address concerns about emerging forms of work.

5)    Social prosperity and inclusion

To promote social prosperity, policies should reduce divides by strengthening foundational skills and life‑long learning and include everyone – notably women, the elderly and low‑income individuals – while tackling risks like cyberbullying and disinformation. Digital technologies can also help to address collective challenges, for example by promoting energy efficiency and reducing healthcare costs, e.g. through mobile health technologies.

6)    Trust in the digital age

To strengthen trust, policies should encourage people and organizations to better manage digital security and privacy risks and improve consumer protection online. National privacy strategies can help promote a whole‑of‑society perspective and facilitate cross‑border data flows, e.g. through interoperable privacy frameworks

7)    Market openness in digital business environments

To foster market openness and dynamism in digital business environments, policies should: reduce barriers to trade and investment; promote open financial markets; tackle changing competition dynamics, including issues related to increasing concentration; and address tax challenges through more effective international co‑operation.

Other important issues:

• Digital transformation strategy: Governments need a comprehensive digital transformation strategy and governance approach that supports effective co‑ordination across policy areas and among all stakeholders. A strategic vision, clear priorities and objectives, measurable targets, sufficient budget, and thorough monitoring of progress and policy evaluation are essential elements of a successful digital transformation strategy.
• Digital agenda: This agenda includes changing competition dynamics; privacy; data and cross‑border data flows; growing inequalities and their relationship with digital transformation; restoring trust in government; democracy in the digital age; and the future of the firm.
• Measuring digital transformation: it remains essential to better measure digital transformation to provide sound evidence on which to base future policy decisions.