September the 29th, 2022 - The Croatian position on this year's digital competitiveness ranking has improved somewhat, but it is still lagging quite significantly behind many countries.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the main finding of the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking 2022 published by the World Competitiveness Centre (WCC) places Denmark in first place, the USA in second place, and the Republic o Croatia in 43rd place out of 63 observed countries.
"Governments and the private sector must invest in all areas – in talent, training and education, scientific concentration and research and development – to protect their digital infrastructure from cyber-attacks and provide competitive e-government services. These are key steps towards the digital creation of a competitive economy," is the conclusion of this report.
"We're pleased with this result, which shows an increase of twelve places on the World Ranking of Digital Competitiveness, the highest that the Croatian position has ever been in. Growth was achieved across all three areas: knowledge, technology and readiness for the future. The ranking itself points to areas where we still need to work, such as knowledge transfer (59th) or the ability to attract foreign experts (59th), but also those where we show excellent results, such as the ratio of the number of students to professors (7th) or investments in telecommunications (5.) This is a recognition of the work we've engaged in so far, but also an obligation to continue with efforts that will lead us to an even higher place on this ranking, in order to ensure a competitive advantage for the Croatian economy and the improvement of society as a whole," pointed out Acting President of the National Competitiveness Council, Ph.D. Ivan Misetic.
The annual ranking quantified the capacity of 63 global economies to adopt and explore new digital technologies and use them to transform government practices, business models and society. It does this by categorising 54 different criteria – a mix of external hard data (two-thirds of the total) and IMD's Executive Opinion Survey (one-third) – into three broad groups: a) future readiness, b) knowledge and c) and technology.
"This ranking of digital competitiveness describes the importance of national factors in explaining the digital transformation of companies and the adoption of digital practices by the general public. Digitally successful countries emerge from a combination of digital talent, digital regulation, data governance, digitalisation attitudes and capital availability,” said Arturo Bris, Director of the WCC.
This year's results shed new light on those factors that make it possible to strengthen the capacity of both governments and the private sector to protect digital infrastructure from cyberattacks, according to experts. This kind of action is of key importance for the adoption and spread of digital technology, and the hope is that the Croatian position on this list will only continue to get higher and higher.
The full report is available here.
For more, make sure to check out our dedicated politics section.
