The present study aims at analysing the global efforts towards
application of information technology in the manpower development activities. It attempts to evaluate (i) the quantum of investment on education and IT related activities, (ii) the growth pattern in the information and communication infrastructure (ICT), (iii) the extent of achievement of literacy, (iv) the interaction of IT with education, (v) the status of the countries in the establishment of IT infrastructure, and (vi) identification of the IT factors that have caused discrimination among the sample regions. The entire study is based on the time series (1980-95) and cross section (1995) data for thirty countries drawn from different socio-economic backgrounds. Trend analysis is adopted to show the growth in the development of IT parameters while computation of a composite index is used to evaluate the penetration of IT infrastructure. Spearman's rank correlation is employed to identify the status of the countries with respect to IT investment and the achievement of literacy. The log linear regression model is adopted to identify the impact of the IT variables on human resource development and the Discriminant Function Approach (DFA) has been adopted to test the equality of mean difference between the various countries with respect to the adoption of IT for HRD.