At a glance
- Strong digital foundations, uneven future readiness across SEA-6. SEA-6 countries have made meaningful progress in connectivity and digital access, but levels of preparedness for emerging technologies, innovation, and resilience vary significantly across the region.
- Digital trust and inclusion are critical gaps in sustaining digital growth. Persistent challenges around reliable internet access, online safety, digital skills, and trust in platforms continue to constrain meaningful and empowered digital participation.
- A confident digital society requires adaptive governance and coordinated action. Realising sustainable digital transformation will depend on evidence-based policies, stronger institutional capacity, and cross-sector collaboration to manage risks, unlock innovation, and build long-term digital resilience.
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Southeast Asia (SEA) sustains its digital momentum, generating USD 300 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2025 and maintaining growth at 15% year over year. Beyond economic value, digitalisation is emerging as a vehicle for generating tangible social impact, though hampered by an increasingly complex landscape of online risks and harms in the region.
This report builds on the working paper, A Framework for Confident Digital Society, to define and conceptualise a framework for a confident digital society that enables sustainable digital development. It proposes metrics for each pillar and sub-pillar of the framework, collected primarily from publicly available sources. The Southeast Asia-6 countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) are the focus of the report, while Brunei, Cambodia and Laos are included to contextualise the overall regional performance.
Key Takeaways
Initial results show that SEA-6 countries have made strides in achieving stable digital foundations, while future-readiness levels vary.
Opportunities for building confident digital societies across and for the region include:
Addressing the growing need for equitable, affordable, and more importantly, reliable internet services.
The past decade has seen SEA-6 prioritise the expansion of the internet to cover the broader population, with the region nearly doubling the average share of individuals using the internet from 48.9% in 2015 to 85.4% in 2023. However, the speed, coverage and consistency of internet services in SEA still lag behind global standards, with the average Southeast Asian perceiving they do not have good coverage in their area. Facilitating inclusive, affordable and reliable access to digital goods and services is fundamental to SEA’s digital transformation journey.
Ensuring safe, secure and trustworthy digital platforms for empowered digital participation.
In the region, curbing disinformation and fostering digital trust are emerging policy priorities for facilitating meaningful participation in digital spaces. SEA’s growing digital distrust and lower confidence in the use of new technologies are rooted in the prevalence of cyber threats, limited digital skills, and gaps in digital public infrastructure. Deeper digital participation requires the right enablers to be in place, including but not limited to: national digital literacy programmes, integrated digital public infrastructure, and digital rights and freedoms.
Leveraging digital transformation for productivity and innovation.
The region is navigating the potential of new technological breakthroughs, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), to improve the quality of life while mitigating the negative effects of technological disruptions. To accelerate digital innovation, SEA countries will have to work to address limited digital talent pipelines, ensure social protections fit for the digital context, and create supportive business environments.
Exploring new approaches to governance that strengthen digital resilience.
Resilience in the digital landscape requires adept management of cyber threats, environmental sustainability of digitalisation initiatives in terms of resource consumption and generated byproducts, and openness to innovative governance tools and frameworks. Overall, SEA has made some headway in bolstering institutional capacity to handle the ever-changing challenges of digital transformation, while environmental sustainability remains a challenge. Adaptive, evidence-backed digital policy approaches, particularly for environmental sustainability and policy innovation, can aid countries in developing digital resilience.
This report aims to provide a baseline understanding of where SEA nations stand in terms of having the components for fostering a confident digital society that can sustain and facilitate long-term, positive digital development. Through the outlined framework and metrics, it hopes to serve as a catalyst for the public, private and people sectors to work together on engagements and programmes that can ensure the effective use of technology in facilitating sustainable, inclusive and equitable development in the region.
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