Going Digital Toolkit platform as a monitoring tool of the digital transformation in the Russian Federation
Authors: Prokhorov Р. Е. 
Published: November 2019

Purpose of the study. OECD «Going Digital Toolkit» is one of the tools for monitoring of the digital transformation. Platform can helps to quantify various areas of digitalization and provides a comprehensive description of the changes in the socio-economic sphere.  Despite the Going Digital Toolkit platform has the objective advantages, this tool is practically not used by Russian researchers.  The purpose of this study is to analyze the possibility of using «Going Digital Toolkit» platform as a tool for monitoring the development of the digital economy in the Russian Federation.  

Materials and methods. To achieve the goal of the study, a comparative analysis of the indicators of the Going Digital Toolkit platform was carried out on the OECD countries, European Union countries and the Russian Federation. Research was carried out to:  1) identify the presence of certain indicators in the platform system in case of the analysis the Russian Federation;  2) investigate the relevance of data on indicators presented in the platform system for the Russian Federation;  3) analyze the position of the Russian Federation regarding the OECD and the EU;  4) determine reserves to achieve monitoring integrity based on Russian state statistics and other sources;  5) develop the recommendations for improving the statistics of digital transformation in the Russian Federation.  Along with the information published on the Going Digital Toolkit platform, the data of the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) and the data of the Ministry of Digital Development, Telecommunications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation were used.  

Results. The position of Russia can be assessed as «lagging» in comparison with the countries of the European Union and the OECD. For most indicators that characterize access and use of the Internet, e-commerce and skills, Russia does not exceed these countries. In some cases, the twofold superiority of the EU and OECD countries over the Russian Federation makes it impossible to make an optimistic forecast to correct the current situation in the near future. However, the position of Russia identified on the basis of the platform’s data does not reflect the situation in real time, which suggests positive dynamics in some of the indicators presented.  The issue of using the platform as a tool for monitoring digital transformation in the Russian Federation is debatable. The incompleteness of the information presented in Russia makes the tool impractical, however, the available information, together with the functional advantages of the analytical platform, opens up new opportunities for users.  

Conclusion. The Going Digital Toolkit platform acts not only as an interactive tool for analyzing numerical values for a number of indicators, but also as a standard of a system of statistical indicators necessary for measuring processes and phenomena of digital transformation. The platform can serve as a guide for national statistical agencies in the development of relevant surveys and improve the methodological foundations of statistics in the field of information and communication technologies.