Methodology
How the Index is built and checked.
Every indicator, its source, its transformation and its weight — documented, versioned, and open to challenge.
Scoring
What a score is and is not.
Each of the 47 indicators is scored on a common 0–100 scale after transformation, then averaged within its pillar. The four pillar scores are averaged with equal weight to produce the overall score. There is no discretionary adjustment at any stage, and no analyst may override a computed value.
Equal pillar weighting is a deliberate choice. It means a government cannot compensate for absent safeguards with abundant compute, and it means the Index does not encode a view about which capability matters most. Readers who disagree can re-weight the pillars themselves — the pillar scores are released alongside the overall score for exactly that reason.
Where a government has been unable to supply evidence for an indicator, the indicator is recorded as absent rather than estimated or imputed from a regional average. Absent indicators are shown on the country profile and excluded from the pillar mean, and the count of absences is published with the score. We would rather publish a gap than an inference.
Synthesis from public data
The Index is a synthesis. It does not commission primary surveys of the public, and it does not rely on a single upstream ranking. Indicators are drawn from publicly available material — official strategies, budget documents, regulatory instruments, procurement records, statistical releases and peer-reviewed research — and are normalized to a common 0–100 scale before aggregation.
Each indicator is mapped to exactly one pillar. Pillar scores are the mean of their constituent indicators, and the overall score is the mean of the four pillar scores. Because aggregation is arithmetic and the inputs are public, any published result can be reconstructed independently from the handbook.
Every edition carries the date on which its synthesis was produced. Where an underlying source is revised after that date, the change is carried into the following edition rather than applied retrospectively, so a score always corresponds to a stated point in time.
Sources and versioning
Twenty-one sources feed the 2026 edition, of which fourteen are primary — evidence gathered directly from governments through a structured request, and verifiable against a published document. Every source carries a retrieval date and a version identifier in the indicator handbook, so any score can be reconstructed from the record.
Corrections
Governments and researchers who dispute a score can submit evidence through the corrections process. Every accepted correction is logged publicly with its date, the indicator affected and the resulting change to the overall score and rank. Corrections are applied to the live dataset immediately and reflected in the next printing of the report.
Assessment framework
Four pillars, weighted equally.
Equal weighting is a deliberate methodological choice rather than a default. A government cannot offset absent safeguards with abundant compute capacity.
Institutional capacity
Whether a named body owns AI policy, holds a recurring budget, and has authority to commission and withdraw systems across departments. Coordination that exists only on an organization chart does not score.
Technical foundations
Compute capacity under the government's own legal control, data infrastructure, interoperability standards, and the connectivity on which public services depend.
Human capital
Specialist and general capability within the public workforce, the routes by which it is recruited and retained, and the domestic research base available to government.
Governance and safeguards
Enforceable rules, independent oversight with the staff to exercise it, transparency obligations, and a redress mechanism that demonstrably overturns decisions.
An index is only useful if it is willing to publish a score its own funders dislike. That constraint shapes every methodological decision we make.
Discuss the 2026 findings with the research team.
Methodology questions, indicator-level data requests, briefings for policy and executive audiences, and media inquiries are handled directly by the assessment team.