The Impact of Informatisation on Economic and Human Development: A Cross-Country Analysis

This study attempts to measure the impact of information on national development by taking into consideration a set of IT variables, and analyses the contribution of each variable individually and collectively to the national economy and human resource development in the 21 sample countries. The authors developed a composite index to assess IT development in high, middle and low income nations. This paper highlights the disparities in IT development not only among different groups of nations but also within countries of the same group. The IT Index would assist policy makers to determine technologies suitable to people in different geographic regions and according to each country's socio-economic status. The authors also developed a tool to measure the extent of the IT gap between countries. This Informatisation Paucity Index (PI) combines several parameters such as the "Head Count Ratio", "Informatisation Gap Ratio", "Gini Ratio" and "Sen Index". This index sheds light on the distance of individual countries from standard norms fixed for IT development. To assess the relationship between IT availability and the economic (GNP) and human resource development (HRD) of a country, a Correlation Analysis was applied and the impact of each IT sector on overall development was derived from the Regression Analysis.