Global Information Technology Report 2009-2010

The World Economic Forum has just published its Global Information Technology Report for 2009-2010. There’s some interesting movement on the accompanying Network Readiness Index. A few E. Asian countries are continuing their upward move, most notably Hong Kong and Taiwan. Consequently, some former chart toppers are being pushed down in the list. Most notably Norway and my own native Iceland. At least in the case of Iceland, I know that this is due to a combination of policy changes in Iceland and changes in the way that the index is calculated. Going down to #12 is a rather dramatic drop, though, for a country that peaked at #2 for two years, 2004 & 2005.
Several helpful changes have been made this year in the way the index is presented. Countries are now categorized according to country income groups. The list indicates countries’ places in the overall list and also within their specific income group. For example, we see that the highest ranking upper-middle income (UM) country is Malaysia, which is a full 13 places higher than the next UM country and well above many high income (HI) countries. The highest ranking lower-middle income (LM) country is China and the highest ranking low income (LO) country is Vietnam. Interestingly, Trinidad & Tobago is the lowest ranking HI country at #79 despite a number of projects in recent years to increase access to and use of information and communication technology. The web-based analysis tool also makes it possible to conduct some informative “quick & dirty” analyses.
One of the things that I looked for especially (albeit without conducting any rigorous analysis) was whether there might be any noticeable relationship between aggressive censorship policies and rankings in the index. Other than a few UM countries known to censor internet access ranking quite low, there doesn’t seem to be any significant relationship. In fact, countries known to control access to information appear pretty randomly distributed (just look at China way up there at #37). This might be considered somewhat surprising. It seems to me that free access to information via technology would be a significant factor in determining “network readiness” on a global scale.