4. Digital economy

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At last, an international economic indicator that has some good news for Ireland. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranks Ireland in 17th place in a global scoreboard of digital economic activity. That’s one place ahead on the previous year’s score, within a whisker of the UK’s ranking (14) and ahead of leading European economies such as Germany (18) and France (20).

The EIU uses a number of measures – connectivity, infrastructure, consumer and business adoption, government policy, as well as the business, social, cultural and legal environment – to arrive at the scoreboard. Over the ten years it has been tracking digital activity, the EIU has made changes to keep pace with developments, for instance factoring the share of fibre optic access lines into its broadband scores and looking at 3G and 4G mobile subscriptions to arrive at a score for mobile adoption.

A breakdown of Ireland’s scorings under the various EIU categories is revealing. In one category, “consumer and business adoption,” Ireland made it to the premier league – ranking 8th of the 70 countries covered. This heading measures successful implementation and evaluates “the amount that businesses and consumers spend on accessing ICT services, the extent and range of internet features used by individuals, their online purchasing activity, and the extent to which individuals and businesses use the online public services that have been made available.”

This stellar result compensated for other categories, such as government policy and the legal environment, where the Irish scores were lower than Ireland’s overall average.

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit, Digital economy rankings, June 2010

Back to the contents of State of the Net issue 18