The OECD Index of Digital Trade Integration and Openness (INDIGO)

1.  OECD Index of Digital Trade Integration and Openness

The OECD INDIGO is a summary measure of evolving international discussions and commitments on issues that matter for digital trade across 193 countries, from 2000 to 2024. The INDIGO ranges from zero, no digital trade integration and openness, to one, capturing full digital trade integration and openness with all partners and across all issues identified.

The INDIGO captures both the breadth and depth of international discussions and can therefore be understood as a measure of distance to full digital trade integration with all partners. It distinguishes between two dimensions:

• INDIGO-i tracks non-trade-related international instruments, including discussions at the United Nations, the OECD or Asia-Pacific Economic Community (APEC) on issues that matter for digital trade, including privacy, cybersecurity, and AI governance.

• INDIGO-t focuses on trade-related instruments, including WTO agreements, regional trade agreements (RTAs), and dedicated digital economy agreements (DEAs).

The INDIGO is based on an underlying framework that reflects ongoing and concluded digital trade and related discussions, covering 28 specific areas categorised under five broad policy areas:

• Enabling e-commerce: Including issues related to electronic transaction frameworks, electronic authentication and electronic signatures, electronic contracts, electronic invoicing, electronic payments, digitalising border processes and paperless trading.

• Openness and e-commerce: Including customs duties on electronic transmissions, as well as access to the internet, telecommunications, ICT goods and open government data.

• Trust and e-commerce: Including online consumer protection, unsolicited commercial electronic messages, personal data protection, source code, cryptography, and cybersecurity.

• Cross-border data flows and data localisation: Including measures affecting the flow of data and the location of computing facilities.

• Wider digital economy issues: Including competition in the digital economy, digital inclusion, digital identities, artificial intelligence, taxation and FinTech.

By offering a structured and evolving view of digital trade integration, the INDIGO serves as a critical tool for policymakers, helping identify where progress is being made, where gaps remain, and how countries can work together to create a more open and seamless global digital economy. At the same time, the INDIGO can be used for counterfactual “what if?” analysis, identifying the implications of different policy changes on digital trade integration and openness.

Key messages

• Global discussions on digital trade are in their early stages but are rapidly gaining momentum. The world economy is just 8.5% of the way towards what could be considered full global digital trade integration and openness. Recent years have seen an increase in the diversity of the issues covered in international discussions, largely due to digital trade provisions in trade agreements and digital economy agreements.

• While bilateral digital trade discussions are expanding, they only represent 10% of existing digital trade integration and openness. At present, global digital trade integration and openness remains largely driven by WTO initiatives which incorporate more countries.

• The level of digital trade integration and openness differs widely across countries. Singapore stands out as the most integrated and open country to digital trade with an INDIGO-t of 0.17 points. It is closely followed by Australia and Japan. For these countries, digital trade provisions in RTAs and DEAs contribute an important share of total digital trade integration and openness.

• The WTO e-commerce Moratorium, the only explicit WTO provision on e-commerce, represents 24% of existing digital trade integration and openness. Although many existing RTAs have similar provisions in place, not renewing the e-commerce Moratorium would reduce existing digital trade integration and openness significantly.

• The successful completion and incorporation of the Agreement on E-commerce (AoE) would increase global digital trade integration and openness by 21%. The more countries join the agreement, the higher the overall impact on the INDIGO and on trade.

• Participating countries will see their digital trade integration and openness increase, but to different extents. For those that are currently most integrated, such as Singapore, Australia or Japan, the AoE offers the possibility of more modest increases in the INDIGO helping reach agreement on digital trade issues with countries that they do not currently have an agreement. However, for those that are currently least integrated, such as Benin, Burkina Faso and Gambia, the AoE offers the possibility of signing a set of digital trade provisions with 71 new partners leading to a doubling of the INDIGO.

• There is an opportunity cost to not participating in the AoE. Many top performers, including Indonesia, Thailand and Viet Nam, would see their INDIGO ranking fall considerably as others join the AoE. For example, Viet Nam would move from 5^th position to 39^th if the AoE were to be signed without them.