INDEX METHODS FOR ASSESSING BIG DATA UTILISATION BY THE NATIONAL ECONOMY

Abstract

The article examines international indices and ratings that assess the use of big data at the macroeconomic level. It is established that the Big Data Readiness Index is the only specific tool that assesses this phenomenon. Problematic aspects of the aforementioned index assessment tool were analyzed in terms of universality and methodology. The article proves that building an index of big data use requires a deep understanding of processes in the digital economy, their boundaries, and context. It examines the role of big data within Industry 4.0, and the connection of the datafication process with other phenomena of the digital economy: digitization, digitalization, and digital transformation. It is established that datafication is both a consequence and a catalyst of other phenomena of the digital economy, and therefore it is indirectly assessed by existing digital transformation indices. The definition of the datafication index of the national economy is formulated as a tendency and ability to use data-oriented tools in economic activity. An approach was proposed to construct the datafication index based on generalized critical success factors of big data projects for companies in the following categories: organization, data, people, technology, and governance. Individual success factors identified at the macroeconomic level were generalized to streamline and remove duplicates. It is shown that existing indices for assessing the digital transformation of the world economy correlate with individual components of the datafication index and can be used in the future to calculate it. Directions for further research were considered, in particular, specifying the components and developing the methodology for calculating the index.