Research is wake-up call to government, showing deficiencies in use of communications technology

Research is wake-up call to government, showing deficiencies in use of communications technology The Connectivity Scorecard is the first index to examine quality as well as quantity of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) usage and infrastructure. Businesses and governments must make better use of their communications and computing infrastructure if they are to benefit from the full economic and social benefits of ICT, according to a breakthrough study by Professor Leonard Waverman of the London Business School and global economic consulting firm LECG. The Connectivity Scorecard analyses not only a nation’s ICT infrastructure but the effectiveness of its use. According to the study, commissioned by Nokia Siemens Networks, even the world’s best connected countries are not exploiting communications technologies to their fullest potential and in many cases policy and regulatory activity designed to promote connectivity is not having the impact intended. The Connectivity Scorecard ranks the United States first in a group of 16 innovation driven economies [as defined by the World Economic Forum], although its score is only 6.97 out of a possible 10.0. The differentiated nature of the Scorecard compared to other rankings is illustrated by the fact that Korea, typically a high scorer on other indexes, is ranked 10th on the list, with a rating of just 4.78. The Connectivity Scorecard measures the extent to which governments, businesses and consumers make use of connectivity technologies - the copper wires, fiber-optic lines, mobile phones and PCs that underpin today’s information economy - to enhance social and economic prosperity. For each component of the Scorecard, countries are benchmarked against the best in class in their tier; thus if a country was best in all dimensions, it would score a maximum of 10.0 Countries typically considered to be highly connected achieved only modest scores on the Scorecard – the average score for a group of 16 countries that include the U.S., Sweden and Korea was 5.05. These results indicate an opportunity for countries to add hundreds of billions of dollars in economic benefit by rethinking how they measure and enable connectivity, according to the study authors. The authors point to a well-known study by Crandall and Jackson1 that showed a $500 billion long-term economic benefit to the U.S. just from achieving near-universal broadband penetration. Given the room for improvement on multiple measures of connectivity, there is every reason to believe that the worldwide gain from improving connectivity would be several multiples higher. Innovation-driven economies - Connectivity score United States - 6.97 Sweden - 6.83 Japan - 6.80 Canada - 6.50 Finland - 6.10 UK - 6.10 Australia - 5.93 Germany - 5.52 France - 5.07 Korea - 4.78 Hong Kong SAR - 4.46 Italy - 3.85 Spain - 3.56 Hungary - 3.18 Czech Republic - 3.11 Poland - 2.18 The Scorecard is also unique in categorizing indicators of connectivity by consumer, business and government, with weightings tailored to each country. Low scores reflect gaps in a country’s infrastructure, usage or both. The United States, for example, scores lower on consumer infrastructure because of its low broadband penetration, and Korea is noticeably low on business usage metrics. “What this study demonstrates is that not even the world’s richest countries can afford to become complacent about their current telecom and computing profile. Every nation has substantial work to do before achieving an ideal score in connectivity,” says Leonard Waverman, Professor of economics at London Business School and the creator of The Connectivity Scorecard. “To increase the societal and economic benefits made possible by connectivity, countries need to consider infrastructure and usage as a combined yardstick.” Russia placed first among the nine nations that are classified in the study as resource or efficiency driven economies. The country’s high literacy rate, along with solid scores on several measures of usage and infrastructure, especially mobile usage, resulted in a rating of 6.11. Malaysia finished second, while India and Nigeria placed at the bottom of the rankings, with scores of 1.68 and 1.10 respectively. (The scores of the innovation-driven economies and the efficiency and resource driven economies are not comparable, as different sets of criteria, taking account of different circumstances in the two sets of countries, have been used to determine scores.) Efficiency and resource driven economies - Connectivity score Russia - 6.11 Malaysia - 5.82 Mexico - 4.37 Brazil - 4.28 South Africa - 4.11 China - 3.42 Philippines - 2.38 India - 1.68 Nigeria - 1.01 “This study is a call to arms for government and businesses. In a period of great economic uncertainty there are great benefits to be gained from the effective use of communications infrastructure. And as we move toward the vision of five billion people connected by 2015, policy makers and business leaders must simultaneously encourage the deployment of infrastructure and invest in the complementary assets – people – that will enable this infrastructure to be used to its maximum potential,” says Ilkka Lakaniemi, Head of global political dialogues and initiatives at Nokia Siemens Networks. The research also finds that different countries have different “to-do lists” to achieve maximised gains from connectivity. The U.S. needs to address the issue of raising broadband penetration and improving affordability; Korea needs to understand why its businesses spend apparently so little on enterprise telephony and IP applications; India and Nigeria face the daunting challenges of improving performance on basic literacy and access measures, while not falling behind in the deployment of cutting-edge broadband and mobility technologies. According to Nokia Siemens Networks, enhancing infrastructure and encouraging more and smarter use of related telecoms and computing technologies will enable critical business and societal benefits, such as greater collaboration and knowledge-sharing, innovation, productivity and quality of life. Within innovation driven economies, economic growth will increasingly depend on new ways of using connectivity and adapting technology by workforce, whether by improving existing processes or inventing new, transformational ones. As populations in these countries grow older, optimising connectivity usage is the best source of future economic growth. For efficiency and resource driven economies, social development, such as education and gender relations, plays an important role in getting the most from connectivity investments. In these countries, connectivity technologies not only provide access, they can transform lives by giving people the means to connect to each other and to useful services and information. “The use of connectivity technologies might be compared to the way Internet usage has evolved in recent years. Even the most advanced countries today have achieved only a first generation of connectivity, unable or unwilling to exploit the full potential of the tools, just as a decade ago, people had only just begun to scratch the surface of the usefulness of the Web,” say Waverman and Lakaniemi. “And so, just as the Internet has moved on to Web 2.0, where the effective use of the available technology has brought about transformational improvements in business productivity and social gains, we believe that a similar move to Connectivity 2.0 will be worth the effort.” Crandall, Robert and Charles Jackson, “The $500 Billion Opportunity: The Potential Economic Benefit of Widespread Diffusion of Broadband”, prepared for Verizon Communications, 2001. About The Connectivity Scorecard The Connectivity Scorecard measures the extent to which technologies that make up connectivity and the way that people use these technologies enhance social and economic prosperity around the world. Created by Professor Leonard Waverman, London Business School, and conducted under his direction by economic consulting firm LECG, this landmark study was commissioned by Nokia Siemens Networks as the first of its kind to rank countries not only on their deployment of telecom and IT infrastructure but also on the extent to which governments, consumers and businesses put this infrastructure to positive use. e-Government National Awards: The winners are announced Winners have been announced in this year's e-Government National Awards 2007, recognising this year's "best of the best" strategies, achievements, teams and individuals in UK public sector web, ICT & e-Government services. Platinum sponsor is KPMG. Also sponsors are O2, the Office of Government Commerce, the Planning Portal and Atos Origin. The Awards are supported by the Government Chief Information Officer (Cabinet Office), the Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm), and SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers). This article comes from PublicTechnology.net http://www.publictechnology.net/ The URL for this story is: http://www.publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=13893