Assessing the level of economic development in countries transitioning to information orientated, postindustrial, societies

The article deals with the classification of countries in terms of development. Nowadays the main criterion for grouping countries by level of economic development, gross domestic product, does not fully take into account the fact that modern human civilization is gradually entering the stage of information society. Gross domestic product, as a quantitative criterion does not take into account qualitative changes in the nature of social production and associated with these transformations. The authors suggest using the index of information and technological development, as an indicator of the level of the country development. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the causes of information technology that Russia lags behind the leading countries of the world