The Digital Achievement Index for Digital Divide across 34 Asian Countries

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

While the development of Information and Communication Technology acts as a catalyst for social development and economic growth, the digital divide is presenting a threat by leaving some countries behind in the race to global competitiveness. Although numerous attempts have been made to analyze the digital divide in various global regions, there are few the detailed studies for the Asian countries. This study is to analyze and examine the level of the digital divide using digital achievement in this region. In order to this analysis, we propose a flexible framework for benchmarking countries’ achievement in ICT diffusion by suggesting a composite Digital Achievement Index (DAI), which is a modified index from the previous studies to target 34 Asian countries. The DAI is a composite index of these five sub-indexes-digital availability, digital mobile adoption, digital affordability, digital speed and internet skills. These five sub-indexes, in addition to those presented in previous studies, reflect factors such as the availability of relevant data in the Asian region and the availability of wireless digital technologies and services. The DAI provides a more comprehensive picture of where the countries stand in their evolution toward narrowing digital divide by measuring each country’s current digital achievement relative to other countries and proposes an important benchmark for assessing country-specific needs.