Impact of information society on the sustainable development: global and regional aspects

M. Zgurovsky, National Technical University of Ukraine “Kiev Polytechnic Institute”

The report deals with the concept of sustainable development, which to a large extent is a continuation of the theory of noo-sphere formulated by the Russian academician Vladimir Vernadsky in the first half of the XX century. The essence of the theory is an obligatory system coordination of economic, ecological and human development in such a way that from one generation to the other the quality and safety of life should not decrease, the environmental conditions should not worsen and the social progress should meet the needs of every person.

Proceeding from the main criterion: ”No decrease of quality and safety of human life” the report investigates the influence of the information society development level on the sustainable development on the global and  regional scale.

The system of sustainable development measures has been worked out on the basis of the introduction of the corresponding index (Isd), which is calculated as a sum of indices for three dimensions: economic (Iec), ecological (Ie) and social (Is) with the corresponding weight coefficients. In its turn, each of the indices (Iec), (Ie), (Is) is calculated by using six global indices widely used in international practice. (see: Table):

Table. List of indices used in calculation of the index (Isd)        

Measure of sustainable development	Global index	Constituents	Source
Economic (Іec)	Ic – growth competitiveness index	3 indicators, 47 sets of data	World Economic Forum [www.weforum.org]
	Ief – economic freedom index	10 indicators, 50 sets of data	Heritage Foundation  [www.heritage.org]
Ecological (Іе)	Ies – Environmental Sustainability Index	21 indicators, 76 sets of data	Yale University, USA [www.yale.edu/esi]
Social (Іs)	Іq – quality-of-life index	9 indicators	Economist Intelligence Unit  [www.en.wikipedia.org]
	Іhd – human development index	3 indicators	United Nation Development program [www.hdr.undp.org]
	Iis – index of information society	3 indicators, 15 sets of data	UNDESA, [UN publication, NE.04.C.1.2005]

             It is obvious that the index of sustainable development (Isd) depends directly on the index of information society (Iis) as on the argument and indirectly on the growth competitiveness index (Ic) as on the parameter. That is why by using the developed model of sustainable development in the global context the calculations of dependence of the index of sustainable development (Isd) on the index of information society (Iis) and on the growth competitiveness index (Ic) were made for 46 countries.

            In regional aspect such dependencies were revealed for a group of countries leading in accordance with the index of sustainable development (these countries were referred to as SMART societies), for G8 countries and a group of former socialist countries.

            The carried out research made it possible to show the factors which determine the state of information society and competitiveness growth to the greatest extent influence the sustainable development both on the global and regional scale. The results of the research may help to develop recommendations on the ways of improvement of quality and safety of human owing to the improvement of parameters of information society and competitiveness growth.