RP’s deficient ICT usage

‘Groundbreaking’ report reveals RP’s deficient ICT usage, infrastructure

Melvin G. Calimag - Manila Bulletin

Despite its reputation as the world’s text messaging capital, the Philippines has yet to make better use of communications and computing infrastructure if the country wants to benefit from the full economic and social benefits of ICT.


This is according to a new "groundbreaking study" by Professor Leonard Waverman of the London Business School and global economic consulting firm LECG, which made use of a "connectivity scorecard" to analyze not only a nation’s ICT infrastructure but the effectiveness of its use.

The connectivity scorecard, the report said, is the first index to examine the quality as well as quantity of ICT usage and infrastructure. The study was commissioned by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN).

According to the report, even the world’s best connected countries are not exploiting communications technologies to their fullest potential and in many cases policy and regulatory activity designed to promote connectivity is not having the impact intended.

The connectivity scorecard ranks the United States first in a group of 16 innovation-driven economies (as defined by the World Economic Forum), although its score is only 6.97 out of a possible 10.0.

The differentiated nature of the scorecard compared to other rankings is illustrated by the fact that Korea, typically a high scorer on other indexes, is ranked 10th on the list, with a rating of just 4.78.

In the list of nine nations that are classified in the study as resource or efficiency driven economies, Russia topped the list with the country’s high literacy rate, along with solid scores on several measures of usage and infrastructure, especially mobile usage, resulted in a rating of 6.11.

The Philippines placed seventh, just slightly ahead of India and Nigeria, with a score of 2.38. Neighboring country Malaysia finished a strong second with a score of 5.82.

The scores of the innovation-driven economies and the efficiency- and resource-driven economies are not comparable, as different sets of criteria, taking account of different circumstances in the two sets of countries, have been used to determine scores.

The connectivity scorecard measures the extent to which governments, businesses, and consumers make use of connectivity technologies -- copper wires, fiber-optic lines, mobile phones, and PCs that underpin today’s information economy -- to enhance social and economic prosperity.

For each component of the scorecard, countries are benchmarked against the best in class in their tier; thus if a country was best in all dimensions, it would score a maximum of 10.0 Countries typically considered to be highly connected achieved only modest scores on the scorecard -- the average score for a group of 16 countries that include the US, Sweden, and Korea was 5.05.

The results indicate an opportunity for countries to add hundreds of billions of dollars in economic benefit by rethinking how they measure and enable connectivity, according to the study.

The authors point to a well-known study by Crandall and Jackson that showed a $ 500 billion longterm economic benefit to the US just from achieving near-universal broadband penetration.

The scorecard is also unique in categorizing indicators of connectivity by consumer, business, and government, with weightings tailored to each country. Low scores reflect gaps in a country’s infrastructure, usage, or both. The US, for example, scored lower on consumer infrastructure because of its low broadband penetration, and Korea is noticeably low on business usage metrics.

"What this study demonstrates is that not even the world’s richest countries can afford to become complacent about their current telecom and computing profile. Every nation has substantial work to do before achieving an ideal score in connectivity," says Leonard Waverman, professor of economics at London Business School and the creator of the connectivity scorecard.

"To increase the societal and economic benefits made possible by connectivity, countries need to consider infrastructure and usage as a combined yardstick."