The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
UK soars ahead of Germany and France in digital competitiveness
The UK has improved its placing in the latest digital competitiveness ratings of countries around the world.
But it still has a long way to go to reach the top of the table.
The United States took the No 1 slot in the 2020 IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking (WDCR) 2020, with Singapore second.
The UK was 13th on the annual list, up two spots and had the consolation of seeing two of its main European rivals, Germany and France, well behind in 18th and 24th place, respectively.
WDCR measures the capacity and readiness of 63 economies to adopt and explore digital technologies for economic and social transformation.
The rankings rely on knowledge, which captures the intangible infrastructure necessary for the learning and discovery dimensions of technology; technology, which quantifies the landscape of developing digital technologies; and future readiness, which examines the level of preparedness of an economy to assume its digital transformation.
The top 10 in 2020 was unchanged from the previous year.
The US led the table for the third consecutive year, followed by Singapore.
Denmark overtook Sweden for third spot, while Hong Kong was up three places to fifth.
Switzerland dropped a place to sixth and the Netherlands fell from sixth to seventh.
South Korea moved up to eighth from 10th, while Norway remained at ninth and Finland rounded up the top 10 – down from seventh.
The US performance was largely driven by knowledge and future readiness.
The best improvements in the rankings were Cyprus, Estonia, Turkey, Greece, Brazil and China, while the biggest falls were South Africa, Luxembourg, Russia, Mexico and Spain.
The WDCR report said: “The flexibility and adaptability of not only enterprises but of individuals sustain the digital progress of countries.
“This is particularly so in the current pandemic context in which flexibility and adaptability to upcoming digital technologies will enable societies to overcome the crisis.”