Malta climbs up in tech-savvy report
Government ranked 8th best for IT policy
Malta ranked as the 23rd most e-ready country in the world, climbing up one position since last year, in a study carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the IBM Institute of Business Value.
The study, entitled 'E-readiness Rankings 2008: Maintaining momentum', defined e-readiness as the country's state of play in information and communications technologies infrastructure and the ability of the Government, businesses and consumers of using them to their benefit.
The US ranked first out of the 70 countries surveyed, followed by Hong Kong, Sweden, Australia and Denmark.
Malta's Government was ranked the 8th best in Europe and 11th in the world in terms of the quality of its vision and policy for the ICT sector.
In this regard, Malta ranked above the Western European average, ahead of countries like Germany, France, Italy, Ireland and Spain.
In connectivity and technology infrastructure, Malta ranked 16th in Europe and 30th worldwide. This covered the availability, affordability and quality of telephony services, personal computers, Wi Fi hotspots, the Internet and digital identity cards.
On business environment criteria - that consider the expected attractiveness of the general business environment over the next five years - Malta ranked 14th in Europe and 24th worldwide, ranking at par with Spain and higher than Portugal, Italy and Greece.
The study showed that Malta ranked 15th in Europe and 25th in the world on criteria relating to the social and cultural environment, which considered the pre-conditions of applying e-business, including literacy, education, Internet experience, entrepreneurial attitude and innovation.
When it came to legal environment, that encompasses the country's overall legal framework and specific laws governing Internet use, Malta shared 14th place in Europe with Greece, Portugal and Spain.
In the consumer and business adoption category, that covered the prevalence of e-business practices in a country, Malta was among the top-performers in Europe and the world coming in at sixth and 10th position respectively.
In this category Malta placed ahead of countries such as Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium and France.