Co-Creation
of the
DQ Index

The DQ Index measures the level of digital intelligence of nations.

A Digital Intelligent Nation means that its citizens and organizations have holistic competencies to achieve well-being, prosperity, and safety/security in the digitized society. In other words, the DQ Index measures the progress of human-centered digital transformation of nations.

The DQ Index is being co-created with partners to be an aggregated measurement for the following thematic pillars by defining the “digital competence” of all stakeholders in the ecosystem, thereby continuing to be relevant, evolving, and transparent.

Check out our work-in-progress collaborative R&D with various partners. The inaugural real-time DQ Index with the outcomes will be released in 2022.

Thematic pillars

Questions that are Being Measured

Child Online Safety

Are children able to use technology safely, responsibly, and ethically with proper protection and guidance from their caregivers, schools, and society?

Digital Enablement and Resilience

Are citizens equipped with basic digital skills to use technology successfully while being resilient to various cyber-threats and risks?

Digital Education for Life-Long Learning

Do nations have formal and informal education systems that provide quality digital intelligence education and training for life-long learning?

Digital Wellbeing

Are citizens able to maintain their wellbeing in the digitized society?

Workforce Digital Skills

Is labour equipped with the right mindset and skills to welcome technological changes in the workplace, and to maximize the benefits of the digital workplace?

Digital Equity

Do women and individuals from underserved communities have access to full digital participation and digital skills to make meaningful change through technology?

Digital Infrastructure

Do nations have hard- and soft- infra structure that ensure technology adoption and advancement?

Indicator Development

For each thematic pillar, we co-design meaningful indicators across the three main dimensions. Join us in developing indicators that contribute to the design and implementation of effective policies and practices that drive to close the digital skills gaps.

UN SDG Indicators

The current UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) measurement indicators have not yet fully laid out digital components. The DQ Index aims to be directly aligned with several Sustainable Development Goals (SDG3, SDG 4, SDG 8, SDG 10) and support to the development of indicators related to the digital ecosystem.Learn More.

Standardized and Searchable
Common Measure

We standardize digital intelligence measurement. Each country or organization has their own digital skills framework / program tailored to their own digital transformation agenda. Just like how the SWIFT code facilitates inter- banking transactions, the DQ Global Standards can serve as the inter-operable common language that translates competencies in one framework to match with another’s.

It enables any nation, company, group, or organization to:

  • Align any program with the DQ Global Standards.
  • Measure their impact through standardized common measurement tools linked with the DQ Index.

In this way, the DQ Index can measure the level and progress of digital intelligence of nations in an integrated manner that is standardized and searchable.

DQ Standardization Process

Align with DQ Global Standards

We’ll help your program align with the DQ Global Standards at a granular level through our DQ Micro-Badge (MB) system.

Benchmark International Programs

We’ll help you identify the international reference programs in the DQ program bank that have the best content in relation to your program’s identified DQ MBs. By comparing your program with selected international benchmarks, you can identify your program’s strengths and weaknesses, and enhance the areas for improvement as necessary.

Certify a Program

Your program can undergo the DQ Seal process to gain acknowledgement on your program’s alignment with the DQ Global Standards. At the same time, your program will be included in the DQ program bank to likewise be an international benchmark program.

Develop an Assessment Tool

A white-labelled, customized API tool for assessment and scoring can be developed for you. Based on an AI-based linking and prediction methodology, your program can measure the levels of digital skills on an individual and organizational level as compared to national and global averages, and can be linked with the DQ Index.

Evaluate the Impact

Based on the DQ Index, meaningful and quantifiable measurement of your program’s impact will be generated. Being part of DQ Index, your program will further help inform various stakeholders, including policy makers in your nation and/or region, in continuously identifying and closing the digital skills gaps. 

CASE STUDIES

Collaborative R&D

We are building an international collaborative R&D network to develop the DQ Index as a standardized and searchable metric to monitor global, national, and local progress on digital intelligence, and identify the digital skills gap. The goal is to build an efficient and coordinated R&D network by connecting ongoing digital skills research and initiatives and leveraging the strengths of each effort. Here, we have highlighted some of our collaborative projects with partners in each thematic pillar of the DQ Index.

Join Us

 “Wellbeing is central to our personal health and the health of our societies. Having a balanced sense of self makes us more resilient to cultural and social complexities. It improves our quality of life and fosters the cohesion of our communities. NUS-CTIC’s aim is to promote research towards a more trusted Internet and community. Key here is the role of digital literacy to enhance digital wellbeing. The DQ Index provides a barometer to evaluate these competencies.”

– Professor Audrey Yue, Deputy Director (Research)

2021 NUS: National Digital Wellbeing

Collaborator: National University of Singapore – Centre for Trusted Internet and Community (NUS-CTIC)
Aim: NUS-CTIC aims to develop the national framework for digital wellbeing and its assessment tools. In collaboration with the DQ Institute, NUS-CTIC reviewed and identified key dimensions and indicators of digital well-being, as well as collect empirical data that would provide empirical data of diverse populations and their experiences with digital well-being. The DQ Institute aligns the NUS’s digital wellbeing framework with the DQ Global Standards, develop the codification, and co-develops its assessment indicators based on the DQ Index.
Pillar: Digital Wellbeing
Definition of “Digital Wellbeing”: Digital wellbeing is not just about skills, empowerment, subjective and social wellness, and physiological state. We consider it as an umbrella term that encompasses various indicators discussed above as it includes a multifaceted approach in characterising the term. Given these considerations, we define digital wellbeing as:
  • Crafting and maintaining a healthy relationship with technology that can be used in a balanced and civic way
  • Identifying and understanding the positive and negative impacts of engaging with digital activities
  • Being aware of ways to manage and control factors that contribute to digital wellbeing
  • Read the Report

Proposed Framework on Digital Wellbeing

Digital Citizenship
Digital
Skills
Digital
Identity
Digital
Empowerment
& Agency
Digital Wellbeing
Digital Safety & Security Digital Rights & Responsibilities Digital Communication Digital Emotional Intelligence Digital Creativity Digital Health & Self-Care Digital Consumerism Digital Employment
& Entrepreneurship		 Digital Activism/Civic Participation
Safe and Secure Use Rights and Responsibilities Online Communicative Literacy Emotional Literacy Creative Literacy and Expression e-Health Literacy Consumer Awareness and Literacy Productivity Skills Digital Political Literacy
Secure Identity Management Responsible Netizen Identity Participation and Identity Formation Empathy Content Creation and Evaluation Self-care and Reputation Autonomy and Data Management Career Identity Digital Political Identity
Safe Online Participation Digital Footprint Management Collaboration and Communication Solitary and Relationship Management Digital Creativity and Innovation Healthcare and Social Wellbeing Consumer Rights and Competencies Innovation and Entrepreneurship Digital Political Activism

2021 World Bank: Enhanced Digital Skills for Lifelong Learning

Collaborators: World Bank Europe and Central Asia , Ministry of Education and Science in the Kyrgyz Republic
Aim: This project aims to assess, build capacity, and empower schools and teachers to enhance their delivery of digital education and literacy for students’ lifelong learning and readiness in a global knowledge-based economy.
Pillar: Digital Education for Life-Long Learning
Download the Abstract of the Report: 5-Step-Strategy for Building National Digital Skills Roadmap

2021 Singtel: Digital Enablement

Collaborators: Singtel

Aim: COVID-19 has heightened the urgency to support all citizens of Singapore in an inclusive way – including seniors, SMEs, social sectors, and persons with disabilities with digital skills. It is especially important for them to know how to deal with unintended consequences in the digital world exacerbated by COVID-19. Singtel is developing, in collaboration with the DQ Institute the “Digital Enablement Impact Framework” to understand and measure its different commercial and social efforts with various partners to enhance citizens’ digital intelligence.

Pillar: Digital Enablement

2021 Singapore SkillsFuture, Gnowbe: Workforce Digital Skills

Collaborators: Singapore SkillsFuture, Gnowbe

Aim: The DQ Institute has developed the DQ Assessment, in collaboration with Singapore SkillsFuture, to serve as a common measurement and analytic tool for digital skills based on the DQ Global Standards and global benchmark. All the data collected from the DQ Assessment is included in the Global DQ Databank that produces the DQ Index. Moreover, he DQ Institute is collaborating with Gnowbe in aligning their Micro-learning Courses (MLCs) that are focused on developing future-ready skills with the DQ Global Standards. This collaboration will further enhance the relevance, credibility and accessibility of micro-badges for digital skills globally and will support Gnowbe’s microlearning and micro-authoring platform to enable more organizations in automating and quickly scaling access to digital skills micro-badges to include those without access to computers via smartphone.

Pillar: Workforce Digital Skills

2021 City of London, Ed-En Hub: Workforce Digital Skills

Collaborators: City of London, Ed-En Hub

Aim: ED-EN HUB is an Erasmus+ project co-financed by the European Union and developed by a consortium made up of 8 institutions from 5 different European countries. It aims to create, test, and diffuse collaborative education-enterprise approaches for the identification, development, and assessment of emerging skill gaps, with a focus on transversal and transferable competences.

Pillar: Workforce Digital Skills

A toolkit for the joint development of transversal and transferable competences:

• Link: http://edenhub.eu/

2020 G20 Measurement for Digital Economy & Child Online Safety

Collaborators: G20 Digital Economy Task Force and G20 Civil Society (C20)

Aim: This project aims to support the G20 Digital Economy in developing the common measure for the 2020 G20 Measurement for Digital Economy by suggesting the inclusion of digital empowerment, well-being, and sustainability indicators to the existing indicators of the Measurement through the collaboration of 750+ civil societies.

Pillar: Child Online Safety

• Download: 2020 C20 Policy Pack

• View: 2020 G20 Civil Society discussion on “Global Index for Child Online Safety and Digital Citizenship

2020 EQUALS: Gender Digital Skills Gap

Collaborator: EQUALS Digital Skills Coalition

Aim: This project aims to develop a strategy to close the gender digital skills gap through a multi-stakeholder collaboration.

Pillar: Digital Equity

• Visit: EQUALS website

2020 IEEE Standardization for the DQ Global Standards

Collaborators: IEEE Standard Association, Singtel, Singapore SkillsFuture, Korea IFEZ (Incheon Free Economic Zone)

Aim: This project aims to develop the IEEE Standards for digital literacy, digital skills and digital readiness based on the 2019 DQ Global Standards Report.

• Read: “New Standard Will Help Nations Accelerate Digital Literacy and Digital Skills Building”

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DQ Assessment & Analytics Tools

DQ Assessment was developed as a web/mobile-based platform providing assessment & analytics tools to support digital skills education/training programs to measure digital skills for individuals and organizations based on global benchmarks. It will enable:

1) Common assessments that measure the levels of multiple competencies of digital intelligence of individuals and organizations against global standards with global benchmarks

2) In-depth analysis to the end users (e.g., individuals and organizations) to identify their strengths and weaknesses through global benchmark

3) Customized digital skill development for individuals and organizations to help design customized lifelong training

DQ common assessment tools are developed based on collection of the various assessment instruments from various credible sources and existing research projects of content owner partners.

DQ Micro-Badges

How can individuals know which specific digital skills do they need to learn, and how will these digital skills be relevant to their future-readiness, well-being, and career development? The DQ Micro-Badge (DQ MB) system is a list of the micro-certifications of the DQ Global Standards (IEEETM 3527.1). Each of the DQ24 competencies has multiple constituent facets, represented by micro-badges. The DQ MB helps users to discover which digital skills topics within the DQ Global Standards they will need to obtain through education/training programs, and understand how these programs will enhance specific job readiness skills and overall well-being. The DQ MB also helps digital skill training providers. By aligning with DQ MB, the providers will also be able to identify areas of strength and/or areas for potential improvement of the program, make strategic decisions to further enhance the program, and enhance the visibility of the program as a best practice for specific MBs.