ORBICOM, the International Network of UNESCO Chairs in Communications announces, that it will release a new report on measuring the infostate of 192 countries in the world in September 2005. It will be the second report produced in the framework of ORBICOMs project From the Digital Divide to Digital Opportunities: measuring Infostates for Development.
For the last ten years the term digital divide has become a familiar way of expressing the wide variations in access to ICT across the world. The ORBICOM project From the Digital Divide to Digital Opportunities: measuring Infostates for Development, supported by UNESCO, UNCTAD, ITU, CIDA and IDRC was initiated in the aftermath of the 2003 Geneva World Summit on the Information Society to build on the enthusiastic reception by the international community of the Monitoring the Digital Divide
and Beyond report.
Infostate is an aggregated index of information networks, education and skills, and uptake and intensity of the use of ICT.
Phase two of the project is an attempt to explore the worldwide interest in the role of ICTs for development and how it is disadvantaged by a scarcity of quantitative information to guide informed decision making. Is it narrowing or widening the digital divide over time? Which countries are making progress, how fast, when and what ICTs are driving the evolution? These are some of the issues which phase two is taking up and explores through comparative analysis. The report explains that the Digital Divide is a relative concept and it matters who is compared with whom, in what and when.
Some of the findings of the report show that on the whole the digital divide closing but the digital divide between the group of countries with the lowest infostates (mostly African countries) and all other groups except for the very top one is widening. For instance, many countries in Africa have devised information strategies, taking for granted the relationship between ICT diffusion and economic development, in an attempt to close the gap. These have generally focused on infrastructural improvements: policies in education, for example, have concentrated on hardware provision with much less attention paid to the issues of how new technologies are used.
The report attempts to observe the relative movements of individual countries over the reference period in order to understand which countries are making progress, how fast and through what technologies. A few cases, such as Cote dIvoire and the Central African Republic, are of particular interest since they had similar Infostates in 1995. By 2003, however, Cote dIvoire had an Infostate more than three times that of the Central African Republic. The example of Sudan and Qatar is also an interesting one: Sudan achieved an Infostate value of 29.1 in 2003, which was the value of Qatar in 1995.
Detailed insights on comparative performances of individual countries show that many countries that began with identical Infostate values in 1995 ended up very differently by 2003. The very rapid growth in Kyrgystan, at least up to 2002. becomes very evident from the report findings. Uganda started at the same level, but its growth has been extremely slow, even negative in 2001. Another striking example is Syria and Yemen which started out on the same path, but Syria pulled ahead in 1997 and much more after 2000, while Yemen continued with steady but slow movement.
The key message can be summarized as follows: The digital divide is closing overall because the countries in the middle groups (60 countries) are making good progress against the top (23 countries). The low group (32 countries) is outpaced by the middle groups widening their divide; the only gains made by countries in the low group are against countries at the very top , with whom they are separated by huge gaps. 2001 marks a leveling-off in both the closing of the divides between the high group and all others, and in the low group losing ground against all middle groups.
A brand new component of the report is the inclusion of a section which quantifies the gender digital divide by constructing a pilot statistical database on ICTs and gender. A number of serious difficulties were encountered in the course of the work, including lack of consistent gender statistics in a large number of countries, lack of common definitions and concepts and a mixture of both public and private sources.
The findings of the report show that the gender divide is large and exists both in developing and developed countries it is generally larger in developing countries. There is statistical evidence on gender gaps by location of use, showing that even in countries where access to ICTs is fairly equitable from home women are disadvantaged from workplaces and other locations. The report provides also information on patterns of use with differences in frequency, intensity and type of use. There is a clear recognition that in order to address gender disparities in the context of Information Society more than statistical data is needed. An added-value of the current report is the in-depth information from field-work experiences, case studies and contextual evidence.
SourceUNESCO
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