ICT Development Index and the Digital Divide

The disparity in access to information and communications technologies (ICTs), often referred to as “digital divide”, has received significant attention among policy makers and academics around the world. In particular, the need for continuous monitoring of the ICT adoption rates by communities in different economies has been one of the top priorities in various forums. In order to address this need, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nation agency, proposed a single, comprehensive ICT Development Index (IDI) in 2009. IDI is designed to consolidate useful information from previous measurement indices. One of its main uses, as illustrated by ITU, is to measure the magnitude of the digital divide and how it is evolving over time. The objective of this paper is to supplement the methodologies applied in ITU’s project as well as in previous research in measuring and analyzing the digital divide. Using the data set and the statistical processes applied in the construction of IDI, we employ a cluster-based methodology to analyze the global and regional digital divide and provide additional insights.