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The Networked Readiness Index 2010-2011: Celebrating 10 Years of Assessing Networked Readiness

THIERRY GEIGER, World Economic Forum This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Global Information Technology Report (GITR) series produced by the World Economic Forum (Forum) in collaboration with INSEAD. The initial idea with this project was to explore the impact of innovation and new technologies on productivity and development, as a component of the Forum’s research on competitiveness. To this end, over the past decade the Networked Readiness Index (NRI), featured in the series, has been measuring the degree to which developed and developing countries across the world leverage information and communication technologies (ICT) for enhanced competitiveness. It has been helping policymakers and relevant societal stakeholders to track their economies’ strengths and weaknesses as well as their progress over time, to identify best practices in networked readiness worldwide, and to design roadmaps and strategies toward optimal ICT diffusion. The Report series and the NRI are among the most comprehensive and internationally respected assessments of countries’ preparedness to effectively benefit from ICT advances. While the NRI has accompanied and measured ICT evolution in the last 10 years, every edition of the Report has gathered the insights of industry experts and academics around a theme of networked readiness of particular relevance for the industry together with a number of case studies exploring and showcasing best practices in ICT usage around the world. This year, to celebrate its first 10 years, the Report will take a look at the coming transformations enabled by ICT— transformations 2.0—with a focus on the impact they will have over the next few years on the key societal actors: individuals, businesses, and governments. Over the last decade, ICT in its many manifestations has become truly ubiquitous. The mobile phone is now for many the omnipresent symbol of ICT in our lives. Today we live in a world where more people have access to ICT (usually a mobile phone) than to toilets or clean water or the electric grid. Although researchers and industry observers have documented the positive impact of ICT diffusion on an economy’s GDP—estimates show that a 10 percent increase in mobile phone penetration is associated with a 1 percent growth in GDP1—we continue to be challenged by questions that were raised by John Gage of Sun Microsystems in the first edition of the GITR: “Can we apply ICT to improve the condition of each individual? Can ICT, designed for oneto-one links in telephone networks, or for one-to-many links in radio and television networks, serve to bond us all? And how can new forms of ICT—peer-to-peer, edge-to-edge, many-to-many networks—change the relationship between each one of us and all of us?”2 These questions become particularly relevant given the important role played by ICT (in particular social media) during the recent political upheavals in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt. Governments and public organizations are slowly realizing the power of ICT for 3 1. 1: T he N et w or ke d Re ad in es s In de x 20 10 –2 01 1 Part 1_r2_PART 1 3/29/11 6:44 AM Page 3