2010 digital economy rankings place Portugal in 28th

Portugal was ranked 28th in the "Digital Economy 2010 Rankings”, with a score of 6.90 out of 10 points. This result represents a slight improvement regarding 2009 results, as Portugal had scored 6.86 points in the past year although maintaining its absolute position.

Published since 2000, this annual survey formerly known as "e-readiness rankings", conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), includes 70 countries worldwide and evaluates the quality of their ICT infrastructure and the capacity of their consumers, businesses and governments to use it to their advantage.

This year some of the leading indicators used in the comparative analysis model were changed to follow on ICT trends. According to EIU, most of the changes reflect long-term measures, but a set of modifications is worth mentioning: “as a demonstration of how far the world has progressed in terms of the availability of connectivity, we now evaluate the “quality” of broadband and mobile connections in addition to their prevalence.”

Adding these indicators has affected some of the top ranked economies in Europe and North America and in several cases both scoring and absolute position decreased.

In the different survey categories, Portugal stands out for Legal Environment (8.35), Government policy and vision (7.40), Social and cultural environment (7.33) and Consumer and business adoption (7.10). This last category has the highest weighting (25%), followed by the 20% represented by connectivity. Government policy and vision is the lower weighing factor (10%) while the remaining categories are worth 15%.

Portuguese scoring places Portugal ahead of other European countries as Slovenia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland or Romania, in a table where Nordic countries rule holding four of the top six places.

To EIU “the countries in our study have achieved, to one degree or another, a state of e-readiness”, when considering the number of consumers, businesses and governments connected to the Internet and the actual role of digital communications and services in most economies. The challenge, patent in the survey’s new designation is now in “maximising the use of information and communications technology (ICT) that countries face in the years ahead”.

See full survey http://graphics.eiu.com/upload/EIU_Digital_economy_rankings_2010_FINAL_WEB.pdf