OECD urges more action on bridging digital divides, boosting skills and enhancing access to data at Going Digital Summit | WPN World People News

The digital transformation is well under way, yet its scope and speed varies greatly across countries, sectors, people and places. Going digital will only fully benefit economies and societies if governments step up efforts to prepare businesses, people and policies for a digital world, the OECD said.

More people are connected to the Internet than ever before, but gaps persist and new ones may emerge, according to data presented during the OECD’s Going Digital Summit taking place in Paris. More than four in 10 rural households in OECD countries don’t have access to the fast fixed broadband needed to support the Internet of Things, whereas nearly nine in 10 households in urban areas have fast connections. A striking gap also remains between the way people with low and high levels of education use the Internet: over 40 percentage points’ difference in the case of Internet banking.

A digital divide by gender sees women lagging behind in information and communications technology (ICT) professions, and more than twice as many young men as young women are able to program. In some countries, the gender divide in Internet usage is still too high.

“The digital transformation is affecting every aspect of our lives. It is redefining social and economic interactions; it is raising concerns about jobs, skills, privacy and security. And it is testing our policy frameworks as we try to balance innovations that can greatly improve people’s well-being with many other concerns involving privacy, security, competition or equality, to mention just a few,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “We have a responsibility to get the digital transformation right so it empowers and improves everybody’s lives.”

The digital transformation of economies and societies brings a significant training challenge. Only 31% of adults have sufficient problem-solving skills to succeed in a digital world, and the highly skilled tend to benefit more from digital opportunities. Training must target those most in need, particularly low-skilled workers of whom only 40% receive firm-based training compared to 73% of high-skilled workers.

Data and data flows are an increasingly important source of value creation. Every day, data is produced equivalent to about 1.25 billion DVDs. Creating more value in the digital age requires enhancing access to and sharing of data, promoting interoperable privacy regimes to facilitate cross-border data flows, and opening up government data while taking account of national and private security concerns.

Broader concerns over online privacy and trust must also be addressed, as well as the impact of social networks on people’s mental health and on democracy. Cyberbullying is a growing challenge, with nearly one in ten 15-year-olds saying they are subject to it. The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence is revolutionising production and science and bringing direct benefits to consumers through applications like smart home appliances, improved healthcare and fraud detection but AI is also raising trust, safety and accountability concerns The OECD is seeking to address these by designing a set of guiding principles for AI.

Other key findings and recommendations include:

•The Internet of Things is growing so fast that by 2022 three devices will be connected for every person in the world. But network capacity often lags behind. There are only seven fibre subscriptions per 100 people in the OECD area. Promoting competition and removing barriers to investment in infrastructure, especially fibre, can help increase access.

•Most people, firms and governments are connected, but few are advanced users. Only 11% of small firms perform big data analysis compared to 33% of large ones. Governments can encourage more-sophisticated use of digital tools by investing in ICTs and skills.

•Innovation is increasingly digital and data-driven, but not all countries innovate in the same way. Over 2013-16, about 33% of OECD country patents were in ICT compared to about 60% in China. Governments can boost innovation by promoting entrepreneurship, supporting basic research, and investing in R&D, patents and software.

•The digital transformation is changing the world of work. OECD estimates show that automation may affect almost half of all jobs in the future, but four out of ten jobs created in the past decade were in highly digital-intensive sectors. It is vital that governments ensure fair transitions from declining to expanding job areas and strike a balance between flexibility and mobility on one hand and job stability on the other.

•Trust fundamentally underpins the digital transformation, but almost a third of Internet users mistrust social and professional networks and 15% of EU citizens do not shop or bank online because of security concerns. Digital security risk management and improving online consumer protection should be strategic priorities.

•Digital technologies and data transform how countries compete, trade and invest. For example, firms in the most digital-intensive sectors enjoy a 55% higher mark-up than other firms, and cross-border acquisitions of digital-intensive firms grew 20 percentage points more than those in other sectors over 2007-15. Reducing barriers to trade and investment, and addressing changing dynamics, can foster more market openness.

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development