At a time when the country is going through what is considered to be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1929, it is heartening to note that US has improved the use of its ICT infrastructure over the last year. But the fact that the country is still over 2 points below the "Perfect 10," according to a new study -- 10 being the number that any developed country should score on ICT use in this Internet age -- means that country still has a lot to catching up to do.
This is particularly relevant during a severe economic downturn, given that it is commonly acknowledged that one vital key to improving the economic and productivity performance of a country lies with the greater and better-focused use of Information and Communications Technology,
Sadly, like every other country, the US too is focusing most of its attention on stimulating the conventional sectors of the economy although, say experts, the bang for money in terms of return on investments is the biggest when spent on high-tech.
Consider the latest economic recovery plan presented this month by President Obama's and it becomes evident how little it contains elements of the21st-century twists. Of the huge $825- billion planned stimulus just about $37 billion has been earmarked for hi-tech areas that include $20 billion to computerize medical records, $11 billion to create smarter electrical grids, and a measly $6 billion to expand high-speed Internet access in rural and underserved communities.(Congress may raise this to $9 billion.)
According to the study, called Connectivity Scorecard 2009 commissioned by Nokia Siemens Networks and written by the a noted expert in the telecom arena, Professor Leonard Waverman, 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 2009, which has doubled the number of countries covered in the ground-breaking 2008 study (when US also topped by scoring 6.97 albeit out of a possible 10.0), ranked the United States first in the group of 25 innovation-driven economies, while Malaysia leads a table of 25 resource and efficiency-driven economies
The rankings are determined by the measurement of each country against two criteria - infrastructure and usage plus skills -- in the realms of business, government and consumer, with weightings of each of the three tailored to each country. Low scores reflect gaps in a country's infrastructure, usage or both.
For each of the six components of the Scorecard, countries are benchmarked against the best in class in their tier. Tthus if a country was best in all dimensions, it would score a maximum of 10. The Scorecard, therefore, measures countries against the best ICT usage that currently exists rather than an ideal model.
Thus, the fact that the United States scores 7.71 illustrates that not only is there considerable room for improvement in comparison to its peers in aspects of its performance, but also that there is scope for development beyond that. The Scorecard finds, for example, that the United States achieves a somewhat low score in consumer infrastructure where 3G penetration, and even household broadband penetration, is moderate by standards of other innovation-driven economies.
This under-performance also gets underscored in light of the fact that the Connectivity Scorecard confirmed the reputation of Scandinavia as a technological power region with Sweden, Denmark and Norway all ranked in the top five.
Interestingly, Japan (10th) and Korea (18th) repeated their surprisingly low performances of 2008 as did Germany (13) and France (15). The poor showing of southern European economies is also repeated as Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece shared the bottom slots in the table with eastern European nations.
Connectivity Scorecard is a global ICT index, which measures the extent to which governments, businesses and consumers make use of connectivity technologies to enhance social and economic prosperity. Unlike other research available, Connectivity Scorecard also measures "usage and skills," such as literacy, the use of enterprise software and the accessibility of women to ICT.
According to Ilkka Lakaniemi, head of global political dialogue and initiatives at Nokia Siemens Networks, "Although the scorecard is just about two years old, it has gained immense popularity since the study helps driving future development in the areas and at the same time understand what connectivity can enable development of in societies."
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