TEHRAN -- Iran moves 20 notches up to rank 86 among 193 countries in the United Nations E-Government Development Index (EGDI 2018) in comparison with EGDI 2017, UN website announced on Saturday.

Issued by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, EGDI evaluates the scope and quality of online services, status of telecommunication infrastructure and existing human capacity.

As it is mentioned on UN website, the EDGI value can be between 0 (lowest) and 1 (highest), as it is a weighted average of normalized scores on the three most important dimensions of e-government.

According to the UN data, Iran’s EGDI value was 0.6083 this year. Regarding the sub-items, the country got 0.6319 score in the online service index (OSI), 0.4566 in the telecommunication infrastructure index (TII), and 0.7364 in the human capital index (HCI) this year.
Iran was amongst 17 countries that transitioned from Middle- to High-EGDI level group.  

On his Twitter account, Iran’s ICT minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi pointed to moving up of Iran’s ranking on EGDI 2018.

“It is planned to move up 30 points during sixth Five-Year National Development Plan (March 2021) and this moving is notable,” he wrote.

While European countries contribute 70 per cent in the group of 62 countries with Very-High EPI levels. Asia follows with the largest proportion of 36 percent in the same Very High-EPI level group while comprising 24
percent of the 193 Member States.

Denmark, Australia and South Korea are on top list, scoring a very high ranking in e-government development amongst 193 countries that were evaluated.

The EGDI, which assesses e-government development at the national level, is a composite index based on the weighted average of three normalized indices. One-third is derived from a Telecommunications Infrastructure Index (TII) based on data provided by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), one-third from a
Human Capital Index (HCI) based on data provided by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and one-third from the Online Service Index (OSI) based on data collected from an independent survey questionnaire, conducted by UNDESA, which assesses the national online presence of all 193 United Nations Member States. 

SB/MQ/MG