As commerce continues to shift from physical to digital means, regulatory readiness has created a new source of competitive advantage. Countries today trade more than goods — they exchange data, algorithms, and cloud-based services that move across borders at lightning speed. Digital trade has reshaped the global economy. Yet the legal and institutional frameworks remain uneven, especially when comparing developed and developing nations.
That is where the World Bank’s Digital Trade Regulatory Readiness (DTRR) Database is positioned. The DTRR is a new initiative by the World Bank. It systematically maps how countries support cross-border digital trade through laws, trust frameworks, and platform regulation.
Why Digital Trade Needs a Regulatory Map
Digital trade means the cross-border exchange of goods and services through electronic means. Examples include online education, telehealth, software, and cloud computing. A joint World Bank–WTO report found that in 2022, exports of digitally delivered services reached USD 3.82 trillion. That accounted for more than half of all global services exports.
The rapid pace of growth in digital trade has far outstripped regulatory systems. Many countries are still working with obsolete legislation that doesn’t effectively acknowledge e-signatures, digital contracts, and cross-border data flows. The absence of a clear, harmonized regulatory regime results in confusion for businesses, legal voids for consumers, and constraints for innovation.
The DTRR Database was developed to address just that — to make the invisible rules of digital trade visible, comparable, and actionable.
What Is the Digital Trade Regulatory Readiness Database (DTRRD)?
Developed by the World Bank Trade Team, the DTRR Database is the first global resource to assess and compare the legal frameworks supporting digital trade. It assembles over 13,000 data points derived from over 5,200 legal provisions as part of the national laws, regulations, and policy frameworks for 121 economies, including 95 developing economies.
Each DTRR data point has an explanatory legal paragraph or statute attached to it for transparency and verification purposes. The dataset can be explored via an interactive online dashboard and can be downloaded for extended legal and policy analysis. (World Bank, 2025).
The Three Pillars of the Digital Trade Regulatory Readiness Database
The database is structured around three main policy pillars, each containing several regulatory domains that shape a country’s digital environment:
1. Electronic Transactions
This pillar measures the legal recognition of e-documents, electronic signatures, digital IDs, and paperless trade systems. For example, while over 40% of countries now recognize foreign e-signatures, interoperability remains a major challenge in developing economies. In many cases, the laws exist, but they are not adapted to digital use cases, limiting cross-border enforceability.
2. Trust-Building Regulation
Trust is the currency of digital trade. This section reviews the national frameworks related to data protection, cybersecurity, AI governance, and online consumer protection. More than 80% of countries have some data protection regulation; however, data protection regulations can vary broadly in quality and rigor. Most OECD members have strong data protection safeguards in place, but in various regions including South Asia, only India has a comprehensive data protection law.
In lower-income countries, cybersecurity provisions are often fragmented, and AI-related rules are at a very early stage of development.
3. Platform Regulation
The last pillar focuses on the rules that govern digital platforms — from cross-border data transfer to intermediary liability. Nearly half of the economies impose restrictions on data flows, such as mandatory government pre-approvals or localization requirements.
For example, processing-based data localization (requiring data to be processed domestically) is much more common in lower-middle-income economies, while OECD countries tend to apply more targeted sectoral restrictions, limited to areas like finance or health.
Exploring the Digital Trade Regulatory Readiness Database Dashboard
The DTRR dashboard allows users to compare countries’ digital trade readiness across pillars and income levels. For instance, users can visualize how Indonesia performs against peers such as China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
All policy areas are color-coded – green means strong readiness, orange means partially developed frameworks, and red indicates limited or no policies in place at the time of writing. This visual simplicity reveals more dramatic patterns underneath — it is evident that high-income countries consistently lead the development of trust and platform regulation, but developing countries are trailing behind, especially with regard to AI regulations and intermediary liability.
In addition, the DTRR map indicates where there are barriers to cross-border data flows, where governments require that certain data be stored locally.
As noted in the map, there are often multiple layers of localization requirements in Russia, India, and many African countries, which apply to personal data and data related to national security. On the other hand, North America and most Western European countries seem to prefer policies favoring open data flows with clear oversight.
Why the DTRR Database Matters
For policymakers, the database acts as an evidence-based action plan for reform. It allows governments to assess whether they are on track, identify laws that may be missing, and to create roadmaps for their modernization strategies focused on increasing digital inclusion.
For the private sector, and in particular small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the DTRR provides necessary information on the market readiness prior to entering a new digital market. Whether a country has incredibly restrictive data localization laws or is missing enforceable e-signature creation laws could easily impact business models, and ultimately, whether an SME considers making an investment in the first place.
Development organizations and researchers can also analyze trends, develop technical assistance, or measure the implications of legal reform on digital trade performance using the data.
Overall, the DTRR Database is intended to be ‘an observatory on global regulatory practices’ — a mirror indicating to what extent the world is ready (or unready) for the next evolution of digital globalization.
The Uneven Geography of Digital Law
One of the most striking insights from the DTRR data is the regulatory divide between advanced and developing economies. While OECD countries have evolved cohesive digital trade policies, many lower-income nations rely on general laws that are not digitally adapted, leaving loopholes in enforcement and consumer protection.
For example, some developing countries may have consumer protection acts that predate online commerce, resulting in unclear liability for digital platforms. Others lack the institutional capacity to monitor data transfers or respond to cyber incidents.
These gaps risk widening the global digital divide — a challenge that the DTRR aims to expose and help close.
Connecting Legal Databases Across Sectors
The DTRR database is part of a broader ecosystem of open, regulatory data resources that make global governance more transparent. Similar efforts exist in other domains — for example, the TRAINS Portal tracks trade and tariff measures across countries, while The Database Search’s collection of Legal Databases offers insights into diverse frameworks governing finance, ESG compliance, and corporate law.
Together, such databases empower policymakers, researchers, and businesses to see the patterns behind regulation, anticipate risks, and identify reform opportunities that enable sustainable global trade.
The Road Ahead
The DTRR Database is more than a static dataset — it’s a living diagnostic tool for digital policy. As emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and quantum computing reshape the digital economy, regulations must evolve too.
The World Bank’s initiative underscores that the success of digital trade does not depend solely on technology or infrastructure, but on trust, interoperability, and the rule of law. By mapping where countries stand today, the DTRR helps chart a course toward a fairer, more inclusive digital future.
References and Sources
- World Bank (2025). Digital Trade Regulatory Readiness (DTRR) Database
- World Bank Blog (2025). Unlocking Digital Trade: A New Database Tracks Global Regulatory Readiness
- The Database Search. TRAINS Portal Guide
- The Database Search. Legal Databases Category
