Evaluation of the Digitalization Efficiency of Countries Using Data Envelopment Analysis

Digitalization of countries is a challenging process, which implements digital technologies that are necessary for enabling the concept of smart city. Quantifying the success of countries in the digitalization journey is a need for pursuing improvements. This work proposes a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)-based model to measure the efficiency scores of countries in terms of digitalization. In other words, the concept of this research is about quantifying how adequate the countries are in implementing digital technologies for creating value and enforcing the concept of smart city. The countries are chosen among the OECD countries and the output indicators required by DEA are selected from the Going Digital Toolkit published by OECD, reflecting seven dimensions of digitalization such as access, use, innovation, digital jobs, society, trust and market openness. The model results show that 44.4 % of the evaluated OECD countries are identified as efficient in terms of digitalization.