Assessment of the Readiness of Regional Transport Systems for Digital Transformation

Abstract

The events of 2020 and emerging social and economic restrictions have increased the relevance of digital transformation, leading to the transition to new services, platforms, business models, as well as to the development of digital systems. The study aims to develop a new approach to assessing the readiness of regional transport systems for digital transformation and identifying regions in which the potential of digital development is not fully exploited. In the study, we used index method, statistical methods (including standard deviation), the principal component method for selecting and evaluating indicators to create a composite index, etc. The proposed approach was tested in the industrially developed regions of the Russian Federation. At the first stage, industrialised regions were divided into 5 groups according to the readiness of transport systems for digital transformation (extremely low, low, moderate, high, extremely high). The group with the lowest values of indicators included Vologda, Volgograd, and Irkutsk oblasts. A low level of readiness was recorded in Novgorod, Kaluga and Omsk oblasts and Krasnoyarsk krai. The largest group of regions with a moderate readiness index included seven regions: Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Leningrad, Rostov, Samara oblasts, Perm krai and the Republic of Bashkortostan. Lipetsk, Murmansk and Chelyabinsk oblasts are characterised by high readiness, while Nizhny Novgorod, Sverdlovsk and Moscow oblasts have an extremely high level of readiness. At the second stage, the regions were distributed according to the deviation of the level of digitalisation from the level of readiness of the transport system for digital transformation. As a result, the study revealed the potential of digital development of transport systems in industrialised regions.