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STS2320 Mohamed A I.
enabling environment. The importance of this initiative stems from the need
to support sound, evidence-based and effective decision- and policymaking.
However, the Index alone will not be sufficient to devise new policies or
interventions. The true function of the Index is to shed light on the strengths
and weaknesses of a given system, not to provide suggestions for how to
respond to these strengths and weaknesses. Additional, tailored analysis by
relevant national, regional and international actors is required to identify
appropriate actions and interventions. Furthermore, it is important to ensure
continuity in data collection in order to amass information over a sufficient
period of time to allow accurate analysis of positive and negative trends, rather
than providing a snapshot of the situation at a single point in time. Another
intended benefit of the Index is the facilitation of partnerships and exchanges
between relevant actors such as governments, decision makers, scholars and
all other concerned authorities at the local, regional and international levels.
In this regard, the Index may facilitate collaborative projects among
institutions and organizations that seek to build their own indices to fill the
gaps in existing knowledge systems.
While recognising the strength of the methodology and structure, the
Global Knowledge Index will be subject to regular updates, revisions and
refinement. This will allow us to develop an increasingly credible and relevant
product that can adapt to global transformations and remain responsive to
evolving development requirements. In its next edition, more space will be
allocated to the environment component, which constitutes an important
pillar in achieving sustainable human development in its contemporary sense.
The process of refining the Index will not be free from challenges, such as
creating comprehensive, accurate and regularly updated databases,
expanding data sources, developing methodologies that allow accurate
utilization of big data and checking the robustness of the index using global
sensitivity analysis, Saltelli el al. (2008).

References
1. Cornell University, INSEAD and WIPO (2017). The Global Innovation Index
2017: Innovation Feeding the World. Tenth Edition. Ithaca, Fontainebleau,
and Geneva. Available from: https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/gii-
2017-report
2. Groeneveld, R.A., and G. Meeden (1984). “Measuring Skewness and
Kurtosis”. The Statistician, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 391–99.
3. Hair, J., R. Anderson, R. Tatham and W. Black (2015). Multivariate Data
th
Analysis (7 ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall International.
4. Leon, R.D. (2017). Measuring the Knowledge Economy: A National and
Organizational Perspective. Management Dynamics in the Knowledge
Economy, vol. 5, No. 2. Available

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