Summary

  • The ITU’s 2026 ICT Development Index covers 159 economies, but its separate global skills series has overall skill-level results for only eight countries.
  • ITU says much of the gap may be statistical plumbing: countries often collected the underlying survey activities but did not yet calculate comparable skill levels from them.

The next world map of digital development has a rather awkward blank: the people using the networks. The International Telecommunication Union can score connectivity across 159 economies. For overall digital skills, its October 2026 statistics page lists eight countries. In those eight, the share of Internet users meeting the basic-skills threshold runs from 16 per cent to 74 per cent. A 58-point spread is not a rounding error; it is a warning about how much of “meaningful” connectivity is actually visible. ITU’s ICT skills series

The index and the skills series are related, but they are not the same table. The 2026 ICT Development Index (IDI), released on 30 June, covers 159 economies and uses ten indicators across universal and meaningful connectivity. The assessment is primarily based on 2024 data. The report says the IDI does not adequately reflect skills or online safety and security; fixed-broadband penetration is also outside its indicator set. The score can therefore be precise about the things it counts while leaving out conditions that help make a connection useful. ITU’s 2026 IDI report

That omission has a measurable shape. Since 2020, 88 countries have submitted some digital-skills data to ITU. Forty-eight provided comparable data on ICT skill levels. Eight supplied an overall skills measure. Those are nested counts, not competing totals. ITU reports that the eight-country basic-skills share ranges from 16 to 74 per cent. The 16-to-74 per cent range describes those eight; ITU publishes no comparable overall-skills result for the other 151 IDI economies.

The way the number is built matters. ITU groups activities into five areas: information and data literacy; communication and collaboration; digital content creation; safety; and problem-solving. A person counts as having basic digital skills after reporting at least one activity in each area during the previous three months. Above-basic requires at least two activities in each. The measure asks what people did, not whether they award themselves a flattering grade.

Here is the useful twist: ITU says that deriving overall skills does not require additional data collection. It does require national teams to analyse existing household-survey microdata. In many cases, ITU says, countries had collected enough information about the underlying activities but had not produced the combined skill-level results. The missing ingredient may be analysts, consistent processing, and a routine for publishing the result—not another questionnaire handed to households.

A comparable measure still needs enough activity questions across all five areas, consistent definitions, sound sampling and a clear treatment of missing data. The 2026 IDI report says official statistics remain difficult to compare across countries, and that constraint limits how far the next methodology can change. A score assembled from unlike ingredients is tidy in a dashboard and troublesome in a cabinet meeting.

The institutional clock is now visible. Member States approved the present IDI methodology in November 2023 for four years. Resolution 131 directs ITU to publish scores without country rankings, rely primarily on official Member-State data, and consult members when revising the method. The 2026 edition is the last under the current validity period. ITU’s revision page says the subgroup’s September 2026 report will form the basis of consultation with Member States. Resolution 131 · IDI revision process

That is a good moment to ask the unglamorous question: who will turn survey files into a measure that can travel between countries? The global index depends on national statistical offices, ministries and regulators for much of its evidence. If a country can collect the activities but cannot routinely calculate or publish the combined result, the international scorecard cannot repair that gap by changing its colour palette.

A better next cycle would treat the path from household survey to comparable skill measure as part of connectivity infrastructure. ITU and Member States can publish a clear implementation path: which five-area activities are collected, whether existing microdata can produce the threshold, who validates the calculation, and when the country result enters the next dataset. Report the coverage of each step beside the final score. Then readers can see whether a blank means no survey, no usable data, no analysis, or no publication.

The IDI does not rank countries, by design. The more consequential race is the one inside each statistical system: can it turn observed activity into trustworthy public evidence before the next method cycle ends? An index is only as useful as the work its members can keep doing after the launch event.

Sources