Digital Potential of Russian Regions

The tasks of accelerated digital development of Russia, arising in the face of various external challenges, require solving the problems of digital inequality in the foreseeable future. Their solution is complicated, among other things, by a very significant variety of economic and innovative conditions of various regions of our country, and requires its comprehensive consideration. The study defines the concept of the digital potential of the country’s regions and presents a set of indicators for its assessment. The purpose of the study is to detail the ideas about the digital inequality of the regions of Russia based on the use of the concept of their digital potential. This goal is achieved by solving the problems of revealing four aspect digital potentials (personnel, technological, infrastructural and commercial), which allow characterizing the integrated digital potential of the country’s regions. Direct rank comparison and typological methods were used to assess the aspect and integral potential of the regions. The results of the assessment and comparison of regions by their aspect and integral digital potential allow us to come to a number of generalizations. Among the leaders are regions with the largest agglomerations, as well as a number of regions of new development in the North, while mainly old – developed industrial regions, as well as regions with a high proportion of rural population, lag behind. Leadership in different digital potentials does not necessarily coincide. However, a group of leaders in integral digital potential consisting of 13 regions stands ou