ICT Development Index by Country 2024

The ICT (information and communications technologies) Development Index helps to identify countries that have greater technological expertise. It also highlights divides between countries that have high-tech capacities and those that need more investment in their national communication technologies.

Goals of the ICT Development Index

The ICT Development Index (IDI) has four main goals to attain through its scale. First, it seeks to identify the current level of information and communications technology development in countries around the world. Second, the scale shows how both developing and developed nations progress toward improving their ICT. Third, the IDI highlights the disparities between nations in their development of ICT. Finally, the IDI looks at the potential that countries have for their ICT development.

What Does the ICT Development Index Mean?

The score for a country can help policymakers identify the level of ICT development within that country during that year. However, changes over time help to show where a country stands in its ICT evolution. Comparing IDI values with other countries also shows how the nations stand against each other in their progress toward improving ICT.

Measurements Used to Calculate the ICT Development Index

Eleven separate metrics go into calculating the total ICT Development Index score for a country. These metrics fall into three separate groups, which have different weights when determining the IDI.

The two most heavily weighted groups are ICT access and ICT use. Each of these accounts for 40% of the IDI score. The third group is ICT skills, which only accounts for 20% of the total score. Therefore, the calculated values for ICT access and ICT use have more importance in the overall IDI score than ICT skills.

Each of these groups has a different number of the 11 metrics within it. ICT access has five metrics. ICT use only has three of the measurements, and the ICT skills group includes the remaining three.

Within each group, the metrics have even weight. For example, the five metrics in ICT access each are 20% of the ICT access score.

Countries with High IDI Values

High IDI values equate to greater proliferation and use of communications and information technology within a country. The most recent rankings for IDI place Iceland at the top as having the best score globally. South Korea and Switzerland finished second and third.

Countries with Low IDI Values;

The most recent rankings placed Eritrea at the bottom of the list with the lowest IDI score of the 176 nations evaluated.