Business at OECD (BIAC) held its annual consultation with OECD Ambassadors and Leadership on February 22 with the theme, “Exiting Crisis Mode: Addressing Business Recovery, Risks and Realities.” USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson participated as a BIAC spokesperson with an intervention focusing on “Digital,” in which he emphasized several points that honed in on ensuring inclusive and sustainable outcomes.

Robinson noted that the business community looks to the OECD to lead in the development of consistent, coherent and cross-cutting policy frameworks for emerging digital technologies. “We point to the OECD AI principles as an excellent example of how multi-stakeholder processes can develop cutting edge principles for the digital economy,” stated Robinson.

He also stressed the need for globally interoperable data policy frameworks that facilitate more responsible data-sharing and collaboration, as well as enforceable cross-border and cross-sector data flows—adding that the upcoming OECD Digital Ministerial will be an important opportunity for the OECD to deliver cross-cutting data governance policy guidance that works for business, governments and individuals alike.

Finally, Robinson emphasized support for OECD efforts to produce high-level principles addressing the critical issue of trusted government access to personal data held by the private sector. “OECD is best placed to address this important issue, which underpins economic growth and societal well-being,” stressed Robinson.

BIAC provided other interventions on various policy priorities such as trade and investment, climate change, energy, taxation, employment and health, with BIAC representatives including several BIAC Committee Chairs and Vice Chairs. The BIAC input was responded to by OECD Ambassadors, including U.S. Ambassador Jack Markell, as well as representatives of the OECD Secretariat.

The Annual Consultation was opened by OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann, BIAC Chair Rick Johnston (Citi and USCIB board member), and Italian BIAC Board member Emma Marcegaglia, who served as chair of Italy B20.

A summary of the meeting by BIAC is available here, which includes a link to BIAC’s Recommendations from the private sector affirming the role of the market economy.

USCIB, Business at OECD (BIAC), and the OECD held another successful Digital Economy conference on May 25, which focused on a decade of OECD’s Internet Policy Principles (IPPs) and aptly titled “Policymaking in a Data-Driven World.” Distinguished speakers from the OECD and both the public and private sectors provided insights and expertise during the event: AT&T, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, IBM Ireland, Walmart, the Inter-American Development Bank, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, MIT, Georgetown University and others.

The IPPs, adopted in 2011, have underpinned the OECD’s evolving work on digital economy issues. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has required many to conduct their lives primarily digitally, highlighted the salience of the IPPs, with its calls for global free flow of information and services, multistakeholder participation in policymaking, and consistent and effective privacy protections and cooperation to ensure Internet security.

“History will likely show that the IPPs were one of the OECD’s more noteworthy contributions to policymaking in a digital economy world,” said USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson during his opening remarks.

Moreover, these themes have been echoed in recent digital economy work of the United Nations, the U.N. Internet Governance Forum and other multilateral bodies. The virtual conference also considered how the IPPs have been reflected in some of the OECD’s ground-breaking digital work – such as development of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Principles and how IPPs may be employed to address challenges posed by the rapid pace of digital innovation and related changes to the digital ecosystem.

“Over this past year with the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed an incredible acceleration of the digital transformation which has made our cooperation with the OECD all the more important,” said BIAC Executive Director Hanni Rosenbaum. “We see this third phase of the digital project as a key opportunity to advance, among others, secure and globally interoperable policy frameworks for responsible data sharing and collaboration on cross-border data flows with trust.

The conference was the fifth Digital Economy conference organized by USCIB, BIAC and OECD, and the second conference in the series that has commemorated the late Joseph H. Alhadeff.