Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Economics 29/06/2010: Digital economy rankings 2010: Ireland details

Updated: here is the link to the actual report.

Ireland results, as promised.

High level stuff first:
Good move - 1 rank improvement overall, improvements in 3 sub-categories, but slipping in 3 other.

Compared to peers:
Note: New Zealand has shown remarkable consistent gains over the last 10 years, moving to top 10 position this year for the first time.

Next, consider all categories changes in the case of Ireland:
Very strong across the board, offset by significant deterioration in connectivity and technology infrastructure score (driven by new measurements of quality of broadband and mobile communications introduced in this year's rankings). Weak performance in consumer & business adoption - primarily on the back of economic crisis. Also weak performance in social & cultural environment, driven by education system shortcomings.

So to summarize:
  • Ireland ranks 17th in connectivity & technology infrastructure, though broadband penetration remains low
  • Ireland ranks 17th in business environment in tough market conditions
  • Ireland ranks 17th in social & cultural environment despite low innovation scores compared to regional average
  • Ireland ranks 22nd in legal environment, the main detractor is electronic ID implementation
  • Ireland is in 21st place on Government policy & vision, the major challenge is in ICT spend
  • Ireland is doing well and placed at 8th in consumer & business adoption
  • Ireland has the lowest score drop in Western Europe from last year, which is only -0.02 (7.84 to 7.82)
  • Ireland moved 1 rank up overall compared to 2009 (18 to 17), consumer & business adoption moved 4 ranks up and social & cultural environment up by 3 ranks
  • Ireland has made a lot of progress in Government policy & vision scoring 8.40 and up 6 ranks, the progress is highest (+1.10) of all in Western Europe
  • Broadband quality and affordability the weakest of connectivity category, scoring low on the quality and drop in affordability measurement

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