Every day one exabyte of data is said to travel over the Internet – enough data to fill 300,000 of the world’s biggest hard disks or 212 million DVDs. And astonishingly, according to a new OECD report on Internet traffic exchange, most of the thousands of networks that exchange this traffic do so without a written contract or formal agreement.

The 2012 Technology Foresight Forum will focus on the potential of big data analytics as a new source of growth, which could help generate significant economic and social benefits

OECD events at the Internet Governance Forum 2012 (Baku, Azerbaijan)

While the nature of cyber attacks continues to include criminal activities motivated by financial gain, the main emerging threats are large-scale denial of service attacks, information leaks, targeted cyber espionage, and the disruption of critical infrastructures.

This report provides an overview of existing data and statistics in the fields of information security, privacy and the protection of children online. It highlights the potential for the development of better indicators in these respective fields showing in particular that there is an underexploited wealth of empirical data that, if mined and made comparable, will enrich the current evidence base for policy making.

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.

This report explores principles that could form the basis for good practices in the establishment of international mobile roaming (IMR) agreements between two or more countries. Given the cross-country nature of IMR services and, especially, the fact that wholesale prices are determined by foreign operators outside the jurisdiction of domestic regulators, international co-operation is vital to address the challenges in roaming markets.

This report explores the potential role of data and data analytics for the creation of significant competitive advantage and the formation of knowledge-based capital. Five sectors are discussed as areas in which the use of data can stimulate innovation and productivity growth: online advertisement, health care, utilities, logistics and transport, and public administration.

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.

The work of the expert group played an essential role in a process which concluded in July 2013 with the adoption by the OECD Council of the first revisions to the OECD Privacy Guidelines since their original release in 1980. This document identifies a number of issues that were raised but not fully addressed as part of the review process and which could be considered as candidates for possible future study.

Health care has fundamentally changed as a calling and as a business. Today, another revolution is underway, driven by ICTs, or what we might call tele-technoscience, and responding to what a new OECD report identifies as “social and demographic changes, the rise in chronic diseases, and the need to improve the efficiency and quality of healthcare delivery”.

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.

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 focuses on the development of backhaul and cross-border networks, which enable local networks to connect to the wider Internet. To connect their networks to others around the world, operators need access to regional and international high-speed networks. The level of investment required in these networks varies and can be very different from region to region.

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.

An OECD report looks at new approaches to enhance spectrum management to make more spectrum resources available for wireless communication services to meet current and future demand and, at the same time, increase the efficiency in its use.

A new OECD report finds empirical evidence that imposing mandatory higher charges for the completion (termination) of international inbound traffic suppresses demand. Moreover, governments that impose higher termination charges do not see their revenues increase proportionately.

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 OECD is present at the Internet Governance Forum 2014 and presenting its most recent work on the Internet economy in a number of sessions.

In countries with four or more mobile operators benefits to consumers are visible through more competitive, more inclusive, and more understandable offers. International mobile roaming is another area where challenger brands are changing markets.

A key issue for policy makers and regulators is market structures that will best deliver efficient and inclusive mobile communication services. This report addresses recent experience in selected countries that have changed or held constant the number of facilities-based operators; and initial experience and key questions that have arisen with wireless network sharing.

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.

Like its better known cousin ‘Black Friday’, ‘Cyber Monday’ is a marketing term to mark the kick-off of the holiday shopping season, right after Thanksgiving, in the US. Unlike Black Friday though, Cyber Monday is all about e-commerce.

Measuring the Digital Economy: A New Perspective

The Internet of things, also known as the Internet of everything or the industrial internet, is a term applied to the next 50 billion machines and devices that will go online in the coming two decades. All stakeholders will have to evaluate whether their policies and practices enable or inhibit the ability of economies and societies to seize the benefits.

This working paper describes the potential of the proliferation of new sources of large volumes of data, sometimes also referred to as "big data", for informing policy making in several areas. It also outlines the challenges that the proliferation of data raises for the production of official statistics and for statistical policies.

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.

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.

Study outlining how OECD countries are dealing with the challenges of Open Government Data with a special chapter on the policy context of OGD in the United Arab Emirates.

The objective of this report is to provide an overview of progress made in the implementation of the Recommendation to determine whether any further action is necessary in this area.

Over the last few years there has been increased interest among start-ups in using Internet-based platforms to crowdsource a wide variety of resources, including funding, labour, design and ideas. Does this approach work?

Algorithms lie at the heart of machine learning, which, in turn lies at the heart of much of modern life–from online shopping to intelligence gathering. But most of us know little about these powerful tools and how they work. Is this wise?

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.

We are so used to all things digital that we can sometimes lose sight of just how enormous the phenomenon has become, and how disruptive it can be.

Digital innovation is an opportunity—for governments, for business, for the public, and for the way in which they relate to each other.

Digitalisation of goods and services destroys established business models and disrupts existing value chains. New value chains emerge. This is often called disruptive innovation.

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.

On 21-23 June 2016, Ministers and stakeholders will gather in Cancún, Mexico, for an OECD Ministerial Meeting on the Digital Economy: Innovation, Growth and Social Prosperity, to move the digital agenda forward in four key policy areas foundational to the growth of the digital economy: Internet openness, digital trust, global connectivity, jobs and skills in the digital economy.

Internet access and use is growing in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), but the region needs to move faster in adding broadband infrastructure, expanding access and services and equipping people with the right skills for firms and households to fully benefit, according to a new OECD report.