Tracking science and innovation policies in response to COVID-19


By Andrés Barreneche
OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation
21 January, 2021


The COVID-19 pandemic has generated the worst health, economic and social crisis of our lifetime, and the response from governments and science and innovation systems has been unprecedented. As countries continue to grapple with the virus and its fallout, policy makers across the world have recognised that science, technology and innovation (STI) offer the only exit strategy.

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Since the start of the crisis, governments have introduced many ambitious STI policy initiatives across a wide range of areas. In the first few months of the pandemic, national research funding bodies spent around USD 5 billion* on emergency funding for R&D to address the virus and its impacts. Thanks to bolstered scientific collaboration and innovative technology, researchers were able to transform the genome of the virus into a successful vaccine in record time. But STI policies extend well beyond the laboratory. Countries have established direct channels for scientific advice to inform policy directives, including when and how to enforce lockdowns and other public health measures. They have also introduced emergency measures to counter the disruption to STI systems, and to support the continuity of public research and business innovation.

The OECD has been tracking such policy efforts since March 2020 and recently launched a new interactive database, the STIP COVID-19 Watch, that provides open access to the data. Developed as part of the STIP Compass, a joint European Commission-OECD project, the portal enables users to build interactive timelines of policy initiatives from more than 40 countries and the European Union (EU). It also features interactive dashboards that allow users to learn more about policy initiatives by country, theme and target group. The database will be regularly updated throughout 2021 as the crisis unfolds.

By the end of 2020, almost 700 policies had been reported by government officials in ministries, agencies and public bodies, under the supervision of delegates from the OECD Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy (CSTP). The figure below lists the most frequently used policy instruments, as of January 2021.

Policy instruments reported in the STIP COVID-19 Watch database
Policy instruments reported in the STIP COVID-19 Watch database

Source: STIP COVID-19 Watch, 12 January 2021.

Below are a few more highlights from the information gathered so far:

These are only some of the many current policy practices featured on the STIP COVID-19 Watch. The portal provides easy access to international comparative information that contributes to policy learning, helps government officials identify opportunities for international collaboration, and informs related policy research and analysis. For feedback or questions about this interactive database, please reach out at STIPolicy.Data@oecd.org.

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* In countries for which data was available.

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