Entropic approach to assessing the level of digitalization in the Russian Federation

Digitalization is an essential tool for active integration, both internationally and at the mesolevel. Moreover, digitalization is now affecting all spheres of human life. Geographical, ethnic, cultural, political and other features inherent in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation determine the heterogeneity of digital transformations occurring on the territory of the country. It is worth noting that on a regional scale, digitalization processes lead to the need for active interaction of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation with a set of external environment factors in search of optimal development directions. The regions of the country are open systems to which one can apply the basic laws of thermodynamics, which allows using the entropic approach in the framework of the work. The article considers the entropy function as applied to the study of socio-economic systems to analyze the possibility of predicting digital processes at the mesolevel. We calculate a measure of uncertainty in the intensity of digital technology use by entities in different regions of the country. Using the additive property of entropy, we calculated the total entropy index, which characterizes the degree of heterogeneity in the processes of digitalization in different districts of the Russian Federation. We plotted an axis for the indicator of the entropy of digital processes in all federal districts. Such an approach makes it possible to evaluate the possibility of forecasting in the context of uncertainty, which is a necessary feature of open systems. Signifi cant advantages of the proposed methodology are its universality and the possibility for the authorities to use the results of the analysis in order to choose the optimal strategy for the digital development of the country's districts, taking into account the degree of uncertainty characteristic of particular regions of the Russian Federation.