Telecommunications giant Telefónica, in conjunction with academics from London’s Imperial College Business School, George Mason University, and the University of Pécs compiled the Index on Digital Life to measure the global digital economy.

Rather then measuring each country's infrastructure, the Index focuses on three key dimensions of a country’s capacity to embrace and improve the lives of its citizens:

• Digital Confidence: how readily and confidently individuals and organisations engage with the country’s digital infrastructure;
• Digital Openness: how well a country’s digital infrastructure facilitates open access to information; and
• Digital Entrepreneurship: how readily citizens and organisations leverage the digital infrastructure, for example to improve services like transport, health or education provision.

The study seeks to explain how the process of digitalisation, the embedding of digital technologies in everyday life, leads to social and economic outcomes such as more sustainable energy use, better health care and disease control, more efficient transport systems, wider access to education, or participation in creative, cultural, political and community activities.

The Index includes policy recommendations for governments and policy makers which emphasise:

• Regulatory conditions that affect market structure, open innovation and customer choice;
• Legislation to encourage customer experience, freedom of expression, privacy and security; and
• Policies to support innovation, e-skills, cultural attitudes and the start-up ecosystem.

The Index suggests that Australia could extract more output from traditional strengths in innovation by focusing specifically on strengthening startup and scaleup entrepreneurship.