[FoME] ITU: Neu entwickelter "ICT Development Index"

[Christoph Dietz]

Download des Berichts (109 Seiten; 1,53 MB):
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/idi/2009/material/IDI2009_w5.pdf

1. News Release UN News Centre, New York, Mar  2 2009 10:00AM:

The most advanced nations when it comes to information and
communication technology (ICT) are found in northern Europe, with Sweden
topping the list, according to a new ranking released today by the
United Nations of 154 countries worldwide.

The ICT Development Index (IDI), produced by the UN International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), compared developments in these countries
over a five-year period from 2002 to 2007 using indicators such as
households with a computer, the number of Internet users and computer
literacy levels.

“The report shows that overall the magnitude of the global digital
divide remains unchanged between 2002 and 2007. Despite significant
improvements in the developing world, the gap between the ICT haves and
have-nots remains,” the agency said in a news release.

The research found that the most advanced countries in ICT are from
northern Europe, with the exception of the Republic of Korea, which
ranks second, followed by Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland and Norway.
These countries are followed by other, mainly high-income countries from
Europe, Asia and North America. Western and northern Europe and North
America are the regions with the highest IDI scores, and most countries
from these regions are among the top 20 ICT economies, according to the
ITU.

The agency added that poor countries, in particular the least developed
countries (LDCs), remain at the lower end of the index with limited
access to ICT infrastructure, including fixed and mobile telephony,
Internet and broadband.

Given the close relationship between ICT level and gross domestic
product (GDP), many of the poorer countries, especially in Africa, rank
further down in the IDI, with little change in ranking since 2002, ITU
reported. Some developing countries, though, have moved up considerably
in the Index over the five-year period, including Pakistan, Saudi
Arabia, China and Viet Nam, partly due to high mobile cellular growth,
coupled with an increase in Internet users.

ITU added that both developed and developing countries have increased
their ICT levels by more than 30 per cent over the five-year period, but
developing countries are still lagging behind on ICT access and usage.
The data also showed that there has been a clear shift away from fixed
to mobile cellular telephone use, and that by the end of 2008, there
were over three times more mobile cellular subscriptions than fixed
telephone lines globally. Two thirds of those are now in the developing
world compared with less than half in 2002.

Also, based on ITU estimates, 23 out of 100 inhabitants globally used
the Internet at the end of 2008.  But penetration levels in the
developing countries remain low, and Africa with 5 per cent penetration
is lagging behind. When it comes to broadband penetration, figures are
even lower, noted the ITU, the lead UN agency for ICT issues, and the
global focal point for governments and the private sector in developing
networks and services.

2. From the Introduction (p.1-2):

... In the developing world, mobile phones have revolutionized
telecommunication and have reached an estimated average 61 per cent
penetration rate at the end of 2008 - from close to zero only ten years
ago. This is not only faster than any other technology in the past, but
the mobile phone is also the single most widespread ICT today. The
number of Internet users, on the other hand, has grown at a much slower
rate, in particular in the developing world, where at the end of 2007
only 13 out of 100 inhabitants used the Internet. Fixed Internet access
in developing countries is still limited, and, where available, often
slow and/or expensive. High-speed (broadband) connections are rare and
mobile broadband, while increasing steeply in high-income countries, is
still insignificant in most developing countries...

In conjunction with the WSIS process, a number of ICT composite indices
have been published, including by the ITU. This Report builds on these
indices and presents the ICT Development Index (IDI), which incorporates
different aspects and lessons learned, from earlier indi¬ces. In
particular, the development of the IDI has been guided by previous ITU
composite indices, such as the Digital Access Index (DAI), the Digital
Opportunity Index (DOI) and the ICT Opportunity Index (ICT-OI). The IDI
has been produced as a response to calls by ITU Member States to merge
previous ITU indices into a single index in order to track the digital
divide and benchmark information society developments. The ICT data
presented in the Report and used to construct the Index are all
collected by ITU, mostly through its annual questionnaire sent to
Governments. They are complemented by data capturing literacy and
enrolment, sourced from UNESCO.

The Report first provides a brief overview of the latest global trends
in selected key ICT indicators, including the latest estimates for
year-end 2008 (Chapter 2).
Then, the ITU ICT Development Index (IDI) will be presented for two
years, 2002 and 2007. Chapter 3 explains the background and context for
developing the IDI and presents the conceptual framework and the
methodology used to compute the IDI. It is fol¬lowed by a discussion of
the results in Chapter 4. The chapter will show progress made between
2002 and 2007, for individual countries, regions, as well as by level of
development. It features the overall Index as well as its three
subcomponents (access, use, and skills) and explains why countries are
doing better in one or another area, and how their ICT levels changed
during the five-year period. Chapter 5 takes a closer look at the global
digital divide. Based on the IDI values, statistical methods were
applied to measure the changes in ICT developments by groups of
countries at different ICT levels, from 2002 to 2007. Although results
have to be interpreted with caution, they suggest that globally the
digital divide is as prevalent as before, but is slightly closing
between countries with very high and low ICT levels. A new ITU ICT Price
Basket was created to track chan¬ges in tariffs charged for key ICTs
(Chapter 6). The ICT Price Basket, which combines prices for fixed and
mobile telephony, and broadband Internet access, provides for the first
time a measurement tool for assessing ICT afforda-bility globally. It
compares prices among countries for the three ICTs in US$ values, in
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) values, and as a percentage of Gross
National Income (GNI). The results reveal that while fixed telephone
tariffs are relatively cheap in most countries, fixed broadband tariffs
are often prohibitive and thus a major impediment for countries
embracing ICTs. While the ICT Price Basket is presented here for one
year only (2008), the objective is to track it annually and thus provide
policy makers with a tool to monitor ICT price developments over time.
Data on tariffs were collected by ITU directly from commercial offers
advertised on operators' websites. Chapter 7 summarizes the main
findings of the Report, draws conclusions and provides some policy
recommendations.