This report identifies prevalent concepts and practices and presents them in a way for financial sector authorities to consider and apply to their respective jurisdictions.
... See More + Starting with the debate of whether cyber-specific regulations are necessary, the paper goes on to discuss the essential coordination between financial sector authorities and other state agencies in dealing with cyber risk. It then moves on to the topic taxonomies as one need to have a common language when speaking about cybersecurity to avoid any misunderstanding. Next sections discuss the issue of reiterating, or in some cases redefining, the responsibilities of the Board, Senior Management, and the Information Security Officer, specifically in dealing with cybersecurity. Next, a prominent feature in many supervisory and regulatory practices is the role of incident response and recovery, as well as requirements of tests and simulations. Lastly, the paper covers the managing outsourcing risk.
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Agriculture plays a vital role in the development of many countries. Access to markets, finance and information are cornerstones for agricultural growth.
... See More + Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supports farmers by facilitating access to markets through real-time data on market prices, weather forecasts, information on pests, seed varieties and planting techniques. A major impediment for smallholder farmers to fully exploit the benefits of ICT is the lack of sufficient infrastructure and mobile networks in rural areas. A reason for this persisting network coverage gap stems from the significant capital investments required for providing widespread ICT access, which mobile operators have often little incentive to make since the potential profit margins in rural areas are relatively low. This paper examines the role of regulations in facilitating ICT access and ultimately rural development. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The second section discusses the role of an enabling environment and ICT regulations that are critical for expanding access to rural areas. The third section presents the new data set on the quality of regulations followed by the analysis of the relationship between regulations and key ICT development indicators. The final section draws some concluding remarks.
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The review presents an in-depth analysis of Ukraine's intellectual property system regarding its support to technology transfer and commercialization of publicly funded research and development.
... See More + The analysis attempts to identify regulatory and framework impediments for the commercialization of publicly funded research and recommends reforms and policies that could improve the framework conditions for intellectual property (IP) and technology transfer (TT). The analysis is based on available legal, regulatory, and policy documents and information from secondary resources as well as qualitative interviews with stakeholders. The review finds that academic and publicly funded research in Ukraine rarely reaches the market due to its inherently basic research orientation; its lack of relevance to local industry needs; low capacity and demand for research by the private sector; legal, institutional, and administrative hurdles; weak culture of research commercialization; and limited incentives for commercialization of research results. Moreover, technology transfer offices and intermediaries are yet to be affective in their research commercialization efforts. Against this backdrop, the report provides a list of policy recommendations along the institutional and normative frameworks. On the institutional level, the recommendations focus on disseminating coherent IP ownership policies across public research organizations (PROs) and funding agencies; developing and implementing IP policies at the institutional level; developing competent intermediary and bridging organizations; improving monitoring of publicly funded IP activities; in addition to other areas. On the normative framework level, the recommended reforms address publicly funded IP ownership legal rules and touch upon contingent legal acts beyond IP and TT regulations. Importantly, the report calls for reforms that provide better incentives for researchers at PROs to disclose inventions, collaborate with local and international private firms, and commercialize research.
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Technology is one of the main drivers of productivity and economic growth. Developing countries have traditionally had difficulties in both developing technology and absorbing foreign technology.
... See More + However, the recent emergence of tech startups present an opportunity. Tech start-ups are an effective a mechanism to both create local technology and absorb foreign technology. The objective of this report is to provide a better understanding of the status of Beirut’s start-up ecosystem and provide policy recommendations for policy makers and other stakeholders who are interested in supporting the growth and sustainability of the ecosystem. The report is based on an in-depth survey of startups and supportive stakeholders of the ecosystem. The findings point out to an early-to middle stage start-up ecosystem that has passed its nascent growth phase but is still far from maturity. Skills, supportive infrastructure, finance pipeline, and community and networks are examined and gaps are identified. Policy recommendations to tackle these gaps are presented based on international practices.
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This note is a part of a series of policy notes prepared by the World Bank in anticipation of a post-conflict transition in Yemen. These notes aimed to identify immediate priorities for stabilization, recovery and restoration of services and infrastructure in the aftermath of Yemen’s current conflict.
... See More + As such, these notes examined short-to-medium-term institutional challenges facing the restoration and improvement of service across sectors. They focused on the immediate post-conflict priorities and challenges facing Energy, Water, Telecommunication, Education, Health, and Transport sectors in restoring services while also contributing to higher-level objectives of addressing systemic inequities and reinforcing trust in the state. The notes make practical suggestions to the government of Yemen and international development partners to provide immediate post-conflict support to ensure empowerment, accountability, and better governance in service delivery. The current paper focuses specifically on how the information and communication technology (ICT) sector can be mobilized more effectively to restore public services in a more inclusive manner immediately after the conflict ends Yemen.
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This note is a part of a series of policy notes prepared by the World Bank in anticipation of a post-conflict transition in Yemen. These notes aimed to identify immediate priorities for stabilization, recovery and restoration of services and infrastructure in the aftermath of Yemen’s current conflict.
... See More + As such, these notes examined short-to-medium-term institutional challenges facing the restoration and improvement of service across sectors. They focused on the immediate post-conflict priorities and challenges facing Energy, Water, Telecommunication, Education, Health, and Transport sectors in restoring services while also contributing to higher-level objectives of addressing systemic inequities and reinforcing trust in the state. The notes make practical suggestions to the government of Yemen and international development partners to provide immediate post-conflict support to ensure empowerment, accountability, and better governance in service delivery. The current paper focuses specifically on how the information and communication technology (ICT) sector can be mobilized more effectively to restore public services in a more inclusive manner immediately after the conflict ends Yemen.
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