This policy profile is part of the Education Policy Outlook series, which presents comparative analysis of education policies and reforms across OECD countries.

Education at a Glance 2016 - Country Notes

Iceland is the OECD’s smallest economy and,currently,the fastest growing. A booming financial services and construction led to a deep financial crisis in 2008. However, Iceland has made a remarkable turnaround, helped by spectacular growth of tourism, prudent economic policies and a favourable external environment.

This note presents selected country highlights from the OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2017 with a specific focus on digital trends among all themes covered.

The family-friendly policies introduced by Nordic countries over the past 50 years and associated increases in female employment have boosted growth in GDP per capita by between 10% and 20%, according to a new OECD report.

The Icelandic standard VAT rate is 24.0%, which is above the OECD average. The average VAT/GST¹ standard rate in the OECD was 19.3% as of 1 January 2019. The previous standard VAT rate in Iceland was 25.5% in 2014. It changed to the current level in 2015. Iceland applies reduced VAT rates of 0% and 11% to a number of goods and services.

The OECD Working Group on Bribery has serious concerns that recent steps taken by Greece may leave the country in breach of the OECD’s Anti-Bribery Convention. On 11 June 2019, Greece amended the Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes. As a result, the main active bribery offence was converted from felony to a misdemeanour, which is a less serious offence.

Greece - Country Health Profiles 2019: Launch presentation. The Country Health Profiles provide a concise and policy-relevant overview of health and health systems in the EU/European Economic area, emphasizing the particular characteristics and challenges in each country against a backdrop of cross-country comparisons.

Sebbene in Italia la prevalenza dell’obesità sia inferiore a quella della maggior parte degli altri paesi, essa ha comunque conseguenze significative. Gli italiani vivono in media 2,7 anni in meno a causa del sovrappeso. Il sovrappeso rappresenta il 9% della spesa sanitaria, superiore alla media degli altri paesi.

A fronte di una spesa sanitaria inferiore alla media, l’Italia ha la quarta più alta aspettativa di vita fra i paesi OCSE, 83 anni alla nascita. Meno del 6% delle persone valuta la propria salute “non buona”, rispetto a una media OCSE dell’8,7%. Gli italiani hanno generalmente stili di vita sani. Il consumo di alcol è basso. Anche la percentuale di adulti in sovrappeso o obesi è relativamente bassa.

Italy’s structural reforms of recent years have improved the financial health of the corporate sector and contributed to a gradual economic recovery. However, the Italian economy still lags other large European economies. Improving the way capital markets function would help drive investment in the real economy, creating jobs and boosting productivity, according to a new OECD report.

Italy - Country Health Profiles 2019: Launch presentation. The Country Health Profiles provide a concise and policy-relevant overview of health and health systems in the EU/European Economic area, emphasizing the particular characteristics and challenges in each country against a backdrop of cross-country comparisons.

Strengthening Cybersecurity is becoming “the new comparative advantage”, as companies and customers move to countries with safer and more reliable cyber-frameworks, said Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General.

This report discusses the main areas in which national strategies to expand broadband networks affect universal service objectives, proposes criteria to rethink the terms of universal service policies, and shares the latest developments across a selected group of OECD countries.

An examination of payments issues is taking place in the context of the review of the OECD’s 1999 guidelines on e-commerce. This report looks at what might need to be amplified or revised to enhance consumer trust and adoption of new and emerging online and mobile payment mechanisms. It reflects contributions made by national delegations, business and civil society.

The OECD has adopted a new basket methodology for benchmarking wireless broadband prices. It adds to the existing baskets for voice, leased lines and fixed broadband services and reflects the increasing importance of wireless broadband for laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Mobile providers have garnered a very large share of traditional services, such as telephony, over the past decade. Nevertheless, mobile networks are dependent on fixed networks and could not efficiently meet the rapidly expanding demand of users without the contributions made by fixed broadband networks.

This report provides background on e-book markets and examines various policy issues. These include differing tax rates in countries between physical books and e-books, consumer lock-in to specific platforms, limitations on how users can read and share their purchased content, and a lack of transparency about how data on their reading habits is used.

Viewers are watching a growing share of video via Internet-based distribution systems. New digital content distribution services are having appreciable impacts on established media industries and network service providers in many OECD countries. This paper argues that convergence should be taken as the rule, rather than the exception. Careful application of best practices can address most policy concerns.

In 2017 a household with two teenagers will have 25 Internet connected devices. In 2022 this will rise to 50, compared with only 10 today. In households in the OECD alone there will be 14 billion connected devices, up from 1.7 billion today and this doesn’t take into account everything outside the household and outside the OECD. All this leads to the smart world discussed in a new OECD paper.

Even though the term “open access” is widely used in policy discussions surrounding broadband networks, there is little universal agreement as to what it means. A new OECD report helps to shed some light on this important concept by examining how and why open access policies have been implemented in communication markets around the world.

While consumer demand for digital goods has increased rapidly in recent years, a range of challenges undermine confidence in the market and require policy attention.

This report takes an initial look at methodologies to measure and estimate the monetary value of personal data, which is creating economic and social value at an increasing pace. But measuring and estimating its value is difficult. This is because not only a huge amount of personal data is being generated, but also as it is used in many different situations and for numerous purposes.

The aim of this consultation, held on 20-21 June 2013 in Oxford (UK), was to stimulate discussion at the highest possible level of expert engagement in setting out an agenda for OECD action to accelerate innovation for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

A new OECD report sheds light on mobile handset acquisition models, and provides pricing information from selected operators in 12 OECD countries for 2012.

OECD countries must ensure mobile markets remain open and competitive in order to sustain innovation and meet rising demand for data services, according to a new OECD report.

This publication reviews progress made since 2008 and identifies areas for future work. It demonstrates that the Internet economy has now reached a point where it has become a new source of growth, with the potential to boost the whole economy, to foster innovation, competitiveness and user participation, and to contribute effectively to the prosperity of society as a whole.

Costa Rica adhered today to OECD legal instruments on Internet governance and international business conduct, demonstrating its willingness to align its policies to best practices in these areas and work together with the Organisation.

Leading mobile platform providers have recently taken steps to improve transparency on how applications access personal data but more can be done to inform users and give them the ability to limit access. This paper provides an overview of the app economy and identifies emerging policy issues related to competition, consumer protection and skills development.

Connected television allows the provision of certain new and valuable services to end-users that will also have implications for the activities of all players in the content distribution ecosystem. In addition to identifying the new services that connected TV enables, this report analyses their effects and includes a discussion of policy implications raised for the actual connected television devices and for network infrastructure.

Today, anything with network access connected to a screen can serve as a television. A new OECD report looks into the impact these new devices and services have on telecommunications networks.

In OECD countries, networks look like a mesh with multiple paths that can act as each other’s backup. In developing countries, however, communication networks often resemble rivers, with small branches of regional networks delivering their traffic to a central national backbone that ends at one submarine fibre, making cable cuts a greater risk to the functioning of the economy.

This report considers the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 alongside the use of network technologies to prolong IPv4 use in the face of depletion of further IPv4 protocol addresses.

This guidance addresses a number of key issues in the emerging mobile and online payment area, including the need to establish minimum levels of consumer protection across payment mechanisms, enhanced privacy and child protection, and standards for transparent and accessible information disclosures.

Colombia has done much to strengthen the rules governing its telecommunication sector, but it must give its regulator more power to enforce them in order to increase competition, particularly in the highly concentrated mobile market, according to a new OECD report.

The actual performance of Internet connections, particularly their speed, is critical to meeting various objectives set out by a range of stakeholders including consumers, policy makers and regulators. This page provides links to network speed tests in OECD countries.

The OECD Recommendation on Digital Government Strategies aims to support the development and implementation of digital government strategies that bring governments closer to citizens and businesses.

Cloud computing has become a platform for innovation. This paper looks at how the cloud changes the way computing is carried out, and evaluates the benefits, challenges and economic and environmental impacts. It discusses the policy issues raised and the role of governments and other stakeholders in addressing them.

The overarching theme of the 2014 Global Forum, held in Tokyo on 2 and 3 October, was data-driven innovation for a resilient society. The event focused on the collection and use of data throughout the economy and society for enhanced growth and well-being.

This report examines what economic theory can teach us about the reasons why the adoption of this latest Internet protocol is taking longer than was thought at its introduction.

Measuring the Digital Economy: A New Perspective

The report notes that industry self-regulation (ISR) can play an important role in addressing consumer issues, particularly when business codes of conduct and standards are involved. It draws on 23 case studies covering notably advertising, financial services, telecommunications, video games and software applications (apps), toys, and direct selling.

On the occasion of the Global Conference on Cyberspace meeting today in The Hague, the Global Commission on Internet Governance (GCIG) issued a statement calling on ‘the global community to build a new social compact between citizens and their elected representatives, the judiciary, law enforcement and intelligence agencies, business, civil society and the Internet technical community..

Countries are making increased efforts to develop their digital economies in a way that will maximise social and economic benefits, but now need to address the risk of disruption in areas like privacy and jobs, according to a new OECD report.

Although OECD countries have made tremendous progress in recent years fostering the deployment of high-speed broadband networks, many challenges remain in terms of how to enhance and expand these networks in order to meet the growing demands of the digital economy.

Code is the next universal language. In the 1970s punk rock drove a whole generation. In the 1980s it was probably money. For my generation, the interface to our imagination and to our world is software. This is why we need to get a more diverse set of people to see computers not as boring, mechanical and lonely things, but as something they can poke, tinker with and turn around.

Do you remember the “not-so-good old days”? When you were delayed while travelling abroad and it was too expensive to use your smartphone to check for alternatives online and inform the people you had to meet?

The digital economy is here, and growing every day, sometimes in surprising ways. As ministers gather for major meetings in Paris and Cancun, government leaders should be in no doubt about the key role they must play in securing the digital economy’s future as a driver of productive and inclusive progress.

The open Internet combined with today’s emerging technologies has launched the information revolution and is powering the global digital economy. Everyone has a stake in that development, both as individuals and in the organizations in which we serve and affiliate ourselves.

The June 2016 OECD Ministerial Meeting on the Digital Economy in Cancun, Mexico will discuss online platforms. Opportunities coming from online platforms not only create innovative forms of production, consumption, collaboration and sharing between individuals and organisations, but also promote economic benefits and employment opportunities thanks to the digital economy by creating a fast-moving business environment.