International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Launches "AI Ready" Framework to Standardize Global AI Adoption
SDG 4: Quality Education | SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has released the “AI Ready – Analysis Towards a Standardized Readiness Framework” (Version 2.0), providing a comprehensive roadmap for countries to integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) across diverse domains. The project, launched in 2024, identifies six fundamental factors for readiness: Data, Research, Deployment Support, Standards, Open Source, and Sandbox Environments. These factors are further disaggregated into 13 technical dimensions—such as Data/Model Marketplaces, Strategy Alignment, and AI for Inclusion—to provide actionable metrics for both policymakers and domain experts.
Global Insights and Readiness Gaps
Digital Skills and Literacy: A strong correlation exists between national income and ICT skill penetration; however, middle-income countries exhibit higher optimism and trust toward AI, creating favorable conditions for adoption if skills gaps are closed.
Infrastructure Disparities: Global AI deployment is constrained by uneven network access; while 96% of the world is covered by mobile broadband, 5G coverage stands at only 4% in low-income economies.
Data Readiness: Beyond accessibility, readiness is determined by the representativeness and diversity of datasets to prevent biased outcomes in localized contexts.
Energy Consumption: A critical standards gap remains regarding the energy characteristics of AI pipelines, requiring systematic study to align rapid AI growth with global sustainability goals.
The AI Readiness Enablement (AI-RE) Toolkit
Self-Evaluation: ITU has designed a dynamic AI-RE Toolkit that allows nations and enterprises to self-assess their status quo and receive customized, actionable recommendations.
Finetuning and Customization: The toolkit utilizes a foundational model that users can fine-tune using regional or domain-specific data to address granular priorities.
Iterative Learning: The toolkit acts as a “living tool,” capable of iteratively learning from new materials like domain reports and deployment stories provided by users.
What is ‘Strategy Alignment’ in the context of AI governance? It is a dimension of readiness that measures the gains from coordinating AI strategies across distributed stakeholders, such as government, academia, and industry. It uses intent-based orchestration, where a top-level vision (e.g., improving child nutrition) is decomposed into specific sub-intents assigned to various service providers. This framework ensures that individual AI initiatives are not siloed but collectively contribute to national developmental goals through standardized task templates and multi-level coordination.
Policy Relevance
The framework provides a standardized bridge between high-level AI ethics and the technical implementation required for inclusive and secure deployment.
Strategic Impact for India:
Bridging the Urban-Rural Divide: Utilizing the AI for Inclusion dimension, India can deploy Edge AI and wearable technologies to provide essential services to citizens with mobility or linguistic challenges.
Leveraging Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI): India can integrate the AI-RE Toolkit into its existing DPI to facilitate the formalization of the workforce and provide specialized AI skills training at scale.
Managing National Priorities: The Granular Priorities dimension allows India to customize AI models for its most pressing sectors, such as agriculture (pesticide optimization) and healthcare (diabetes complications).
Fostering Domestic Innovation: By tracking Contextualization and Regional Impact, India can measure the adoption of indigenous AI solutions and their contribution to global standards.
Follow the full report here: AI Ready – Analysis Towards a Standardized Readiness Framework Version 2.0 Interim Report