JRC Statistical Assessment of the 2015 ICT Development Index

Since 2009, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has been publishing its annual ICT Development Index (IDI), which benchmarks countries’ performance with regard to ICT infrastructure, use and skills. The JRC analysis, conducted at ITU’s invitation, suggests that the conceptualized three-level structure of the 2015 IDI is statistically sound in terms of coherence and balance, with the overall index as well as the three sub-indices – on ICT access, use and skills – being driven by all the underlying components. The IDI has a very high statistical reliability of 0.96 and captures the single latent phenomenon underlying the three main dimensions of the IDI conceptual framework. Country rankings are also robust with respect to methodological changes in the data normalization method, weighting and aggregation rule (a shift of less than ± 3 positions with respect to the simulated median in 96 per cent of the 167 countries). The added value of the IDI lies in its ability to summarize different aspects of ICT development in a more efficient and parsimonious manner than is possible with a selection of 11 indicators taken separately. In fact, for between 26 and 52 per cent of the 167 countries included this year, the IDI ranking and any of the three sub-index rankings (access, use and skills) differ by ten positions or more. This is a desired outcome because it evidences the added value of the IDI as a benchmarking tool, inasmuch as it helps to highlight aspects of ICT development that do not emerge directly by looking into ICT access, ICT use and ICT skills separately. At the same time, this result also points to the value of taking due account of the individual ICT dimensions and indicators on their own merit. In so doing, country-specific strengths and bottlenecks in ICT development can be identified and used as an input for evidence-based policy-making.JRC.DDG.01-Econometrics and applied statistic