A recent OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Clinical Trials issued in December 2012 could improve the outlook for fighting deadly diseases around the world. Here is how.

The explosion of the information world has been a benefit for our organisation, but has raised its own set of new problems.

Science and technology play a central role in our society. They are part of everybody’s life, they help to tackle the grand challenges of humankind and they create innovation and jobs and improve quality of life. Science and technology are part of our culture, and in essence define us as a species that “wants to know”–hence why we are called Homo sapiens. But do we really give science its proper value when it comes to taking political decisions?

The rise of IT and the Internet have been boons to Asia, but not everyone has benefited. There are challenges to overcome, not least in the area of governance.

In 2002 Henry Copeland, chief of Blogads and Pressflex.com, wrote about how blogs, largely unknown at the time, would change web writing and publishing forever. He was right. Then in 2008 in these pages, he told us to bet on Twitter several months before it took off (the OECD opened its first accounts in April 2009). So where is the information world taking us now? Henry provides some fresh thoughts.

Did you know that the organisation that brought you the Higgs Boson (“god particle”) also brought you the world wide web? Robert Cailliau, one of its founders, and James Gillies, a first-hand witness, retrace the story.

People create policy, but underpinning their work, and in some ways hidden from view, is a well-developed, smart information and communications infrastructure. It is a fundamental driver of progress.

Taking as many long-haul flights as possible could hold the answer to your knowledge management problems.

Did you know that, according to the UN Global Pulse, more data was created in 2011 than in the whole of human history, or at least, since the invention of the alphabet?

Making strides in scientific innovation is no longer an initiative of just a few select high-income countries. Research and innovation have become increasingly democratised; indeed, Asia’s emerging economies are now gaining prominence as world hubs of scientific research. While the United States remains at the top in terms of the volume of scientific publications produced and collaborations made, these countries are eager to develop their own innovation capabilities, and strengthen their research and academic partnerships.

The OECD Observer is celebrating its 50th anniversary: no better time than to turn our focus to the currency of information itself.

Though mobile technology is making waves in Africa, airwaves still count.

Assets you cannot touch lie behind successful innovations. What are they and how can policy make a difference?

Innovation is a major driver of productivity, economic growth and development. Many OECD countries today are looking to boost productivity through investments in science, technology and R&D. What experience can Israel, new OECD member and the “start-up nation” feted in a recent book by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, bring to the table?

Canada is home to some well-known technology companies, but is the country innovative enough? The picture is mixed, with resisting complacency being among the challenges to face.

It is a century since Marie Curie won two Nobel prizes, one for physics and the other for chemistry. How can more women be encouraged to work in science?

Fifty-three years after the first satellite was launched on 4 October 1957, space-faring nations have moved from forming a very exclusive club of technologically advanced countries to a large group of states from every continent with a wide diversity of capabilities.