Finnish communications and information technology giant Nokia has authored the 'Digitalisation Scorecard' under the patronage of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, which seeks to help countries adopt pro-digitalising policies into their framework.

Commenting on the purpose of the report, Nokia's president and chief executive officer (CEO) Rajeev Suri noted, "It is an effort focused on helping governments assess their policy framework across multiple priority sectors, such as e-learning or the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) for health care."

The report, titled Working Group on the Digitalization Scorecard: Which policies and regulations can help advance digitalization aims to measure policy implementations in six countries, which are represented by high, middle and low-income nations.

In the high-income list are Finland and Singapore, middle-income is occupied by Colombia and Indonesia, while the low-income segment consist of Kenya and Pakistan.

"Every country covered in the scorecard shows a strong ambition in digitalization, a desire to succeed, and specific policy and regulatory initiatives," reads the report.

The scorecard reviews five sectors, namely agriculture, education, healthcare, government and transportation.

Through a colour-coding system, the policies' effectiveness on particular sectors is highlighted. Blue indicates that an enabling policy or regulation is in place, yellow shows that an enabling policy or regulation is planned, pink displays areas where blocking policies are planned but regulation is missing, while red point out blocking policies which are in place but are not regulated.

For instance, in evaluating Pakistan's agricultural sector's willingness to digitise, the report notes that the country has improved supply and demand planning through the use of digital technologies by adopting policies which have enabled the capture of accurate agriculture-related information.

Marking the issue blue, the literature in particular cites publications by the Federal Agricultural and Livestock Product Marketing and Grading Department, which issues the prices of 24 essential items from 11 markets through the press and radio on a monthly basis.

Similarly, the report paints e-learning quality and accreditation as pink, noting that there is no regulation governing the procedure despite the National Technology Council under the Higher Education Commission (HEC) having been established to monitor the quality of educational degrees and certifications provided by universities.

Addressing the purpose of the report, the document reads, "The purpose of this study is to encourage a critical revision of policy and regulatory frameworks, to map where regulations may create obstacles to the digitalization of a country’s priority sectors – or where necessary policies and regulations are missing."

"The report aims to present concrete examples of policy actions taken by some countries that have succeeded in digitalization so that those can be replicated by other countries where appropriate"