The WBA Digital Inclusion Benchmark measures and ranks the world's most influential companies on their efforts to advance digital inclusion, tracking how companies are expanding access to digital technologies, improving digital skills and literacy, and ensuring safe and inclusive digital environments for all. The 2026 edition assessed 200 companies across key sectors of the digital economy including telecommunications, software, hardware, and digital platforms. The benchmark is developed in close collaboration with an Expert Review Committee and partners including GRI, ITU, and the Alliance for Affordable Internet, with a methodology designed to incentivise companies to understand where digital exclusion risks are highest and act to bridge the digital divide, while keeping human rights and social impacts at its core.
Some digital businesses are able to provide digital services remotely to customers around the world using little to no infrastructure of their own, yet they gain substantial value from interaction with users. This can lead to imbalanced economic value distribution, particularly in tax payments, which impacts governments’ abilities to fund essential services in developing countries.
Taxation, critical to achieving SDG target 17.1 on resource mobilisation, is increasingly challenged by digitalisation, prompting global efforts like the OECD/G20 framework to address these issues. Digital companies need to be transparent about their global economic value generation and distribution. Inaction on the part of companies only serves to strengthen reasons to be critical of them and harms their reputations. Moreover, without vibrant and growing economies across the globe, digital companies will find it increasingly challenging to sell their goods and services.
Research Guidance:
Community investments refer to voluntary expenditures made to support the broader community, including funding for educational programs, health initiatives, arts and culture, or infrastructure projects unrelated to the company‚s core business needs. These investments exclude activities that are legal or commercial in nature or those aimed solely at facilitating the organization‚s operations.‚
The company needs to report the total value of community investments, specifying the form of contributions, such as cash donations, in-kind support, or employee volunteer time. The disclosure must align with sustainability reporting standards, such as GRI 201-1, and emphasize actual expenditures during the reporting period rather than commitments.‚