The specialists of the Institute for Public Administration and Governance and the Faculty of Urban and Regional Development of the National Research University Higher School of Economics analyzed how the authorities of 15 largest megacities of the world, including Moscow and Saint Petersburg, dealt with the pandemic and quarantine.

In terms of the complete readiness of the urban digital infrastructure for the crisis, Moscow is in 4th place among the world's major cities, behind only Singapore and Chinese megacities, ahead of several largest cities in Europe and North America.

The complete readiness of digital infrastructure was estimated as the average of several sub-indices for:

• the efficiency of online systems (25%);

• the effectiveness of video monitoring systems (25%);

• the operation of online registration systems in medical institutions (25%);

• system of online public services (25%)

In the overall ranking of world cities in terms of the readiness of digital infrastructure to work in a pandemic Moscow took 7th position. This ranking took into account the average internet speed and the availability of online services. For the Russian capital, this aggregate figure was 45.5%.

Leading cities in the ranking are Singapore (92.4%), Seoul (66.1%) and Beijing (52.7%), followed by Stockholm (50.4%), Shanghai (50.3%) and Tokyo (47.7%). Moscow bypassed such megalopolises as Paris (41.5%, 8th place), Madrid (39.2%, 9th position), New York (31.1%, 12th place) and London (30, 4%, 13th place).

Analysts used data from official statistics, Google Mobility Reports, and the data from the Smart Cities Index 2019, calculated by IMD and the University of Technology Singapore, and also BandwidthPlace data on the average Internet speed in selected cities.

Original (in Russian)