ICT is the key to saving the economy: professor

Stan Beer
Thursday, 29 January 2009 10:40

IT Industry - Market

A new report demonstrates that the key to turning around the world's economic woes lays with the increased use of ICT, according to the author, a leading business professor. What's more, nearly every country in the world, including the US had room to grow their use of ICT through focussed infrastructure programs.

Professor Leonard Waverman, Fellow of the London Business School and author of Connectivity Scorecard 2009, a report commissioned by Nokia Siemens Networks, measured the extent to which governments, businesses and consumers in 50 countries make use of connectivity technologies to enhance economic and social prosperity.

While the US topped the list for the most "connected" country, closely followed by the Scandinavian countries, Professor Waverman says even the US has considerable scope for further ICT infrastructure expansion.

Professor Waverman calls on governments to stimulate return to growth with investment in the “infrastructure for the 21st Century”. He defines connectivity as the bundle of infrastructure, complementary skills, software and informed usage that makes communications networks the key driver of productivity and economic growth.

“At a time when governments around the world are looking to jump start their economies with a variety of stimuli packages, the Connectivity Scorecard shows that every single one of them, even the United States, has plenty of room to develop their ICT infrastructure and improve the actual use of it to the benefit of both the economy and society,” said Professor Waverman.

“Communications networks are the infrastructure of the 21st century and these networks are very large construction programs. There is great potential for them in using ICT to stimulate growth.” 

The Connectivity Scorecard 2009 ranks the United States first in the group of 25 innovation-driven economies, while Malaysia leads a table of 25 resource and efficiency-driven economies.

Australia ranked 8th in the group of innovation driven economies, behind the US, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, UK and Canada, but well ahead of Japan, Germany, France, South Korea and Italy,among others.

CONTINUED Page 2