The Astana Hub Effect: An Interrupted Time Series Analysis of a National Technology Park, IT Service Exports, and Digital Competitiveness in Kazakhstan

This article examines the maturation of the Astana Hub technology park and its association with Kazakhstan’s national digital competitiveness during the country’s transition from resource dependency toward a higher value-added digital economy. As Central Asia’s largest international technology park, Astana Hub provides a policy-relevant case of a state-initiated open-innovation ecosystem. To proxy the national enabling environment, we construct the Kazakhstan Digital Performance Index (KDPI), a composite measure that normalizes and aggregates three publicly available global indices: the UN E-Government Development Index (EGDI), the Global Innovation Index (GII, WIPO), and the Network Readiness Index (NRI, Portulans Institute). Using an Interrupted Time Series (ITS) design over 2010–2024, we estimate the change in the level and slope of national IT service exports associated with the establishment of the Hub in 2018. The analysis identifies a statistically significant post-2018 increase in the export-growth slope of approximately $112.8 million per year relative to the pre-intervention trend, alongside a near 20-fold rise in IT service exports between 2020 and 2024. By contrast, the composite KDPI shows no comparable acceleration, and an exploratory correlation analysis over the short post-2018 window indicates a positive association between Hub growth and e-government infrastructure but a negative association with the GII. We interpret these patterns cautiously as descriptive evidence consistent with a temporary “island of efficiency,” in which commercial scaling has outpaced economy-wide innovation diffusion, rather than as confirmation of a bidirectional feedback loop or of causal national-level human-capital effects, which the single-country quasi-experimental design cannot establish. The paper discusses policy options for diffusing Hub capabilities into the wider economy and sets out the limitations of the design.