The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) is the first e-index based on internationally agreed ICT indicators. This makes it a valuable tool for benchmarking those indicators considered to be the most important for measuring the information society. Because the indicators used for the DOI have been endorsed by the
international community, they will increasingly be collected over time by countries, adding to the coverage of the index enhancing its inclusiveness.
The core infrastructure indicators selected for constructing the DOI lend themselves to various analytical possibilities. On one hand, the index can be deconstructed along categories such as affordability and access,
access path and device, infrastructure and quality. This assists analysts to determine where countries are relatively strong and weak in order to focus attention on the appropriate area. On the other hand, the DOI lends itself to a fixed/mobile disaggregation, useful for analyzing the degree to which each is impacting the path countries are taking towards becoming an information society.
The DOI is modular so that core indicators for different sectors can be easily incorporated. For example, indicators from the other core areas such as access and use of ICTs by households and individuals or access and use of ICTs by businesses could be included in future versions of the DOI. The DOI can also incorporate social and economic dimensions that impact ICT take-up for instance by linking to the Human Development Index.
The DOI could also be adapted to different analytical uses. For example, a version tailored to low and middle income countries could be created that incorporates communication access indicators once sufficient data is
available and would also include the core broadcasting indicators since radio and television are important development tools. Core indicators that lend themselves to disaggregation by sex can also be utilized to generate a gender-based DOI. Finally, although the research in this report is based on economy level analysis, the DOI could be modified to provide national or regional ICT indices.
Source: ITU.
|
