Digital inequality of the Russian regions: strategic opportunities and threats

The article presents evaluation of digital inequality of the Russian regions – the subjects of Russia. Digital inequality has been assessed according to access to the Internet and digital technology which corresponds to the first level digital divide concept. Also, the Russian regions’ inequality in the effectiveness of use of digital technologie has been evaluated by the gross value added under the section “Information and communication activities”. During the first stage of the study the author analyzed 37 indicators characterizing the digital technology development in the regions to select 12 of them and perform the cluster analysis. The cluster analysis engaged indicators which had high variation coefficients and were not related to each other. The indicators with correlation coefficient exceeding 0.75 were excluded. The second stage of the study involved k -means clustering of 85 regions of Russia with the use of STATA econometric package. As a result of cluster analysis the author identified four groups of homogenious regions varying by the level of access to digital technologies, strategic opportunities and threats of further development. The next stage of the study involved evaluation of digital inequality of the regions by means of the Theil index. The author used the “Information and communication activity” indicator’s value as the resulting indicator to make the Theil index calculation. The calculations were made for all the 85 regions as well as for the four groups of the regions for 2016 and 2020. The decomposition of the Theil index made it possible to assess the intra-group and intergroup inequality. It has been stated that digital inequality in the regional perspective is increaing in spite of the fact that the general penetration of digital technologies is rather high for the country. One of the factors determining the digital inequality is lack of finance for the implementation and use of digital technologies. Each of the group of regions identified has been suggested a scheme of strategic priorities to overcome the digital inequality.