Ireland’s ranking as a place to engage in information and communications technology (ICT) has dropped a full five places to 29th in the world.
The Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011 gauges a nation’s ability to “fully benefit from new technologies in their competitiveness strategies and their citizens’ daily lives”. It uses a single primary index, the Network Readiness Index (NRI) to rank the world’s nations as an indicator of how easy it is to do business and provide services that rely on ICT infrastructure.
Since 2006, Ireland’s ranking has been falling, from 21st to the current ranking of 29th. Perhaps most worryingly, Ireland has fallen behind Malaysia which is classed in a lower income group.
However, Ireland has scored higher than several notables, including other EU members such as Portugal (32), Spain (37) and Italy (51). Ireland still scores ahead of developing economies such as China (36) and Brazil (56). The ranking also puts the country well behind close trading partners such as the UK (15), France (20) and Germany (13), with the US scoring highly (5).
The top ten was dominated by Sweden at number one, which just pipped Singapore, and other Nordics, with the Tiger Asian economies filling out the rest of the single digit places.
Looking at Ireland’s detailed scoring, there are some highlights. Under university and industry research collaboration, the country scores 17th overall, with the quality of education system ranking 11th, though this is deflated somewhat by a quality of maths and science education score of just 34th.
Particularly worrying is the government readiness assessment where the three categories are government prioritisation of ICT with a ranking of 64, government procurement advanced technology at 74 and importance of ICT to government vision at 63.
Under the usage section of the assessment, Ireland fares well in business overall, with a ranking of 15th in national patent office applications per millions of population, and high tech exports as a percentage of total at 12th. However, in the category of technology absorption at firm level, the ranking is a discouraging 32nd, which is only marginally outscored by business capacity for innovation at 31st.
Government usage of ICT does not fare better, with government success in promoting ICT ranked on 64th, government usage and efficiency in ICT at 43rd and government online service index at only 28th.
With the development of the smart economy as a central plank of the new Government’s plans for overall economic recovery, this report is not encouraging. With government scores being among the lowest overall, it is clear that the coalition needs to act swiftly to ensure that the base for any smart economy, namely the country’s core ICT infrastructure, legislative framework and general access, receives immediate investment and improved management. Only when there is ready access to competitively priced, high quality ICT infrastructure will there be a flowering of the much vaunted smart economy, as companies take advantage. While it can be argued that that much of the damage had been done under the tenure of the previous government, that will be no comfort if the slider is not arrested and reversed.
Ireland’s ranking as a place to engage in information and communications technology (ICT) has dropped a full five places to 29th in the world.
The Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011 gauges a nation’s ability to “fully benefit from new technologies in their competitiveness strategies and their citizens’ daily lives”. It uses a single primary index, the Network Readiness Index (NRI) to rank the world’s nations as an indicator of how easy it is to do business and provide services that rely on ICT infrastructure.
Since 2006, Ireland’s ranking has been falling, from 21st to the current ranking of 29th. Perhaps most worryingly, Ireland has fallen behind Malaysia which is classed in a lower income group.
However, Ireland has scored higher than several notables, including other EU members such as Portugal (32), Spain (37) and Italy (51). Ireland still scores ahead of developing economies such as China (36) and Brazil (56). The ranking also puts the country well behind close trading partners such as the UK (15), France (20) and Germany (13), with the US scoring highly (5).
The top ten was dominated by Sweden at number one, which just pipped Singapore, and other Nordics, with the Tiger Asian economies filling out the rest of the single digit places.
Looking at Ireland’s detailed scoring, there are some highlights. Under university and industry research collaboration, the country scores 17th overall, with the quality of education system ranking 11th, though this is deflated somewhat by a quality of maths and science education score of just 34th.
Particularly worrying is the government readiness assessment where the three categories are government prioritisation of ICT with a ranking of 64, government procurement advanced technology at 74 and importance of ICT to government vision at 63.
Under the usage section of the assessment, Ireland fares well in business overall, with a ranking of 15th in national patent office applications per millions of population, and high tech exports as a percentage of total at 12th. However, in the category of technology absorption at firm level, the ranking is a discouraging 32nd, which is only marginally outscored by business capacity for innovation at 31st.
Government usage of ICT does not fare better, with government success in promoting ICT ranked on 64th, government usage and efficiency in ICT at 43rd and government online service index at only 28th.
With the development of the smart economy as a central plank of the new Government’s plans for overall economic recovery, this report is not encouraging. With government scores being among the lowest overall, it is clear that the coalition needs to act swiftly to ensure that the base for any smart economy, namely the country’s core ICT infrastructure, legislative framework and general access, receives immediate investment and improved management. Only when there is ready access to competitively priced, high quality ICT infrastructure will there be a flowering of the much vaunted smart economy, as companies take advantage. While it can be argued that that much of the damage had been done under the tenure of the previous government, that will be no comfort if the slider is not arrested and reversed.
The full report is available here.
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