IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Denmark tops the 2015 Digital Economy and Society Index, excelling in eHealth, eGovernment and eCommerce.

Denmark is generally far above EU average in the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) and is the best performing country in two out of five sub-indices; Digital Public Services and Integration of Digital Technology.

There’s more digital things than we dreamt of

The European Commission has published its league table of digital countries and the Best of Europe’s tech world is, you guessed it, Denmark!

Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland make up the remaining top four, proving that Scandis really do do IT better. But in a not-too-shabby performance, the UK is jostling for attention at number six, right behind plucky Belgium.

Denmark was crowned as the global IT king by the World Economic Forum Wednesday, topping the organisation's 2006-2007 rankings as the most network ready nation.

Denmark is moving up two positions from last year.

According to the WEF, Denmark's climb to the top can be traced back to its excellent regulatory environment, together with the government's leadership and vision in leveraging information and communication technologies (ICT) for growth, and promoting its penetration and usage.

Das Weltwirtschaftsforum (WEF) und die Business-Hochschule INSEAD lobten in ihrer Bewertung für den Digitalisierungsindex (NRI) ein hohes Innovationsniveau und die verbreitete Computernutzung in der Bevölkerung. Bemängelt wurden hingegen relativ hohe Kosten insbesondere beim Festnetz. In der Studie heißt es außerdem, dass die Regierung der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnik mehr Bedeutung für die wirtschaftliche und soziale Entwicklung des Landes einräumen sollte.

In Sachen Breitband-Internet ist Südkorea Weltspitze und Schweden die europäische Nummer eins. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt eine von Cisco beauftragte Studie der Saïd Business School an der Universität Oxford und der Universität Oviedo. Ebenfalls im absoluten Spitzenfeld des 66-Länder-Rankings findet sich die Schweiz. Deutschland dagegen ist mit Platz 27 nur Mittelmaß, noch weiter zurück liegt Österreich. Für die Reihung wurde neben der Breitbandpenetration auch die Qualität der Anbindung berücksichtigt. Über letztere gibt ein "Broadband Quality Score" (BQS) Auskunft, in die Übertragungsgeschwindigkeiten und die Latenzzeit einfließen. Die Basis für die Bewertung waren dabei über 24 Mio. Messungen realer Anschlüsse aus aller Welt auf der Webseite Speedtest.

Broadband take-up among households is just below the EU average (61.7% in Slovenia vs. 62.1% in the EU-25) and is growing at similar rates as Europe as a whole, the report says.

• Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Beijing, London & Seoul are the top 5 digital cities in the index
• European cities ran highly successful traffic management systems, while Beijing applied digital technologies to tackle air pollution and optimise utilities and sharing economy
• Involving citizens in design of smart city schemes underpins meaningful inclusion – a key aspect of successful smart city projects
• Smart city schemes delivered major public health benefits in areas like telemedicine, covid management and remote monitoring of patients

Highly affordable mobile internet has propelled Australia to the top of a global ‘digital quality of life’ index despite the nation’s beleaguered broadband network delivering some of the world’s slowest internet speeds.

Australia was ranked first out of 65 countries in the 2019 Digital Quality of Life (DQL) index released this week by internet privacy company Surfshark.

Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, has been named the safest city in the world. It has achieved this distinction by surpassing Tokyo, Singapore and Osaka which have topped the previous years. Canada’s Toronto is at number two and Singapore is at number three. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has released the list of 60 safest cities in the world under the Safe Cities Index-2021.

Delhi is ranked 48th and Mumbai 50th among the top 50 cities. In the last index, Delhi was ranked 52nd and Mumbai 45th. A comprehensive study of cities around the world was conducted for the index. The EIU had set out 76 parameters to provide a clear picture of global urban security. These included digital, health, infrastructure, personal and environmental safety. All the cities have been given different scores out of 100 in these five parameters. In view of Corona, the issue of environmental protection was included for the first time this year.

The United States ranks fifth worldwide in rankings (.pdf) that include the extent to which countries have online presences "that are the conduit for service flow from government to citizen and consequently a reflection of attention to governance processes," the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs says. Ahead of the United States are South Korea, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Denmark.

This puts the country behind many of the developing nations in the old European eastern bloc, but ahead of all of its Southern African neighbours.

According to the report: “The Southern African region showed little improvement from the 2005 survey. Most of the countries surveyed had a lower ranking in 2005 than in 2008. South Africa continues to lead in this region followed by Lesotho. Botswana experienced a major drop of 29 places declining from being ranked 90th in 2005 to 119th in 2008.”

For the fourth year in a row, researchers at Brown University took the pulse of international e-government efforts and found it to be resting a little too comfortably. While peppered with pockets of surprise—Monaco and Togo rank near the top—the 2004 results are too similar to 2003 to satisfy Darrell West, the Brown professor of political science who led the study.