Economics 29/06/2010: EIU/IBM report on e-readiness

Global Digital Economy 2010 rankings are being launched today by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and IBM's Institute for Business Value. Here are some early results - I will be blogging on more in-depth analysis over the next few days.

Global Top 10:
Sources: all charts and tables are from IBM analysis of EIU/IBM e-readiness rankings, 2010.

Western Europe results:

• Overall, regional digital economy score declined in 2010 – from 7.86 in 2009 to 7.70 this year
• The biggest score decline this year in the connectivity & technology infrastructure (-0.99), which is highest drop of all regions
• Sweden, Finland, Ireland and Spain are up in their overall ranks compared to last year
• The strength lies in all categories being at the top of all regional averages. Also, Western Europe average is higher than Major markets. The score increased for business environment (+0.20) & Govt policy (+0.18) from last year
• Western Europe dropped in all other 4 categories compared to last year (Connectivity, Social environment, Legal environment and Consumer & business adoption)
  

Note that Western Europe leads the rest of the world in terms of regional scores. This, however, in part is due to the inclusion of three smaller economies in North American region: Bermuda, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago.
Clearly, there are two well-defined tiers in Western European regional grouping - countries that score between 1 and 12 globally (challenging top 10 positions in the world) and those lagging at around mid-20s and low 30s.


Ireland results to follow, so stay tuned.