The Contribution of ICT in EU Development Policy: A Multicriteria Approach

Abstract

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector provides a wide range of services for different actors according to their type of actions. In fact, adoption of ICT-enhanced policies is one of the top agendas for governments today in most developing countries. The European Union (EU) and its Member States have a long tradition in development cooperation. The objective of this research is to study the contribution of ICT in the development policy in EU and present the current status by ranking these policies. EU development policies are evaluated qualitatively according to their ICT dependence and complexity levels. The questions, used as criteria, have been retrieved from the official “ICT Implication Assessment method of EU Legislation.” Following the multicriteria method of PROMETHEE II is applied for the total ranking in order to identify the “superior” ones, which present high dependence on and complexity of the ICT implications.