Search the Community

April 11, 2008 S'pore drops to 5th place in tech-saviness ranking By Alfred Siew and Tan Weizhen FROM being the world's most tech-savvy nation, Singapore has dropped to 5th place. It fell two notches on the Networked Readiness index, an annual ranking released on Wednesday by the World Economic Forum. The index, which measures the impact of infocomm policies and usage in 127 economies, ranked Denmark as the most ready to take advantage of technology. It is followed by Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and Singapore. This is the lowest Singapore has ranked since topping the chart in 2005. It was second in 2006, and third in 2007. In this year's ranking, the Republic was top in the quality of math and science education and the Government's vision of infocomm, areas in which it had done well in the past. But it only scored 15th on the accessibility of digital content, a new indicator measuring whether content is widely available on platforms such as the Internet, mobile phones and cable television. It was placed 115th for freedom of the press - one notch up from last year - and 99th for expenditure in education, another new indicator. Dr Irene Mia, an editor of the report and senior economist at the World Economic Forum, said freedom of the press referred to how freely people could share opinions online, and the ranking was based on a survey of top businessmen in 130 countries. Singapore also did well with its quality of education, she said, but based on 2005 figures, it spent 2.7 per cent of its national income on education, which is lower than Denmark's 8 per cent. The Switzerland-based organisation's index is part of a study called The Global Information Technology Report, which is being published for the seventh year. The study is produced with business school Insead and sponsored by networking vendor Cisco Systems. http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/...12.html?vgnmr=1 fwah... drop so many...