healthcare/welfare, administrative services and culture/arts. South Korea was third with the highest deviation values for healthcare/welfare, culture/arts and safety/security.

### (3) International comparison of ICT security A. Evaluation method

Since ICT security depends on subjective value judgments and there is little quantitative data which allows for an integrated international comparison as in the case of ICT utilization, we conducted an online questionnaire targeting users in the aforementioned seven countries. In doing so, we have set the following 10 areas as issues related to ICT security: (1) privacy, (2) information security, (3) e-commerce, (4) illegal/harmful contents, (5) intellectual property rights, (6) manners and social code of conduct related to ITC usage, (7) information literacy, (8) geographical divide, (9) soundness of the global environment and physical and mental health, (10) institutions and customs adopted to cyber society. We then presented three specific issues $ ^{35} $ involved in each area and asked them about overall security.

### B. Overall evaluation rankings

The responses were awarded points to comprehensively compare users' sense of security with regard to ICT in the 10 areas for each country, and deviation values regarding sense of security for each country were calculated from the sums in the 10 areas. As a result, as shown in figure 2-17, the country that scored the highest was Denmark, followed by Sweden, UK, U.S., and Singapore, with Japan the lowest after South Korea. There were about 16 points between the top five countries and the bottom two countries, and users' sense of security in Japan and South Korea is particularly low.

These survey results should be carefully evaluated. This is because sense of secure or insecure subjective and may reflect cultural background or national character. In other words, there is a possibility that a higher percentage of users of ICT in Japan feel insecure

Figure 2-17 International rankings on sense of security regarding ICT

NB. Sense of security in each area was scored in the following manner: “not feel insecure” = 2 points, “not feel relatively insecure” = 1 point, “cannot say either way” = 0 point, “feel relatively” = -1 point, “feel insecure” = -2 points

(Source) International Comparison of ICT-related Developments (2009), Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications

$ ^{32} $ Specific issues involved in each area are: (1) Privacy (illegal acquisition of credit card number, outflow of personal data possessed by public organizations, etc.), (2) Information security (virus infection, illicit access, including or identity fraud and defacement, etc.), (3) Illegal/harmful contents (access to illegal/harmful sites such as online dating sites, posting of defamation and infringement of rights), (4) Information literacy (lack of sufficient knowledge to use and operate ICT equipment, information divide), (5) Geographical divide (geographic divide of optical fiber and terrestrial digital broadcasting, gap between local governments' use of e-applications, etc.), (6) Intellectual property rights, (illegal distribution of pirated DVDs, illegally downloading literature using file-sharing software), (7) e-commerce (trouble with online sellers, safety of e-settlement systems such as e-money), (8) manners and social codes of conduct related to ITC usage (lack of manners concerning use of blogs/BBC, lack of manners concerning conversations and taking photos using mobile phones), (9) Institutions and customs adapted to cyber society (incomplete online administrative services, for example, there are some products not available on the Internet), (10) Soundness of the global environment and physical and mental health (increase in energy consumption caused by an increase in the use of ICT equipment, increase in waste due to replacing ICT equipment).