PH ranks poorly in digital competitiveness

The Philippines fell in terms of digital competitiveness in 2018 to land among those at the bottom 10 in the world.

This was according to the 2018 World Digital Competitiveness (WDC) ranking, published by the International Institute for Management Development and released in the country with its local partner, the Asian Institute of Management’s Rizalino S. Navarro Policy Center for Competitiveness.

The WDC said the Philippines ranked No. 56 out of 63 countries. The list was topped by the United States, followed by Singapore, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland.

Based on the latest WDC, now on its second edition, the Philippines fell 10 notches compared to its 2017 score. At the bottom were Venezuela (63rd), Indonesia (62nd), Mongolia (61st), Peru (60th) and Colombia (59th).

“The objective of the digital ranking is to assess the extent to which a country adopts and explores digital technologies leading to transformation in government practices, business models and society in general,” a portion of the report showed.

The latest WDC used 50 indicators categorized under knowledge, technology and future readiness.

Knowledge refers to intangible infrastructure and includes factors such as talent, training and education. Technology refers to the underlying regulatory and technology framework. It includes investments in technology-related developments.

Finally, future readiness refers to the readiness of an economy to assume digital transformation. Included here are business agility and IT integration. The WDC noted that 60 percent of its indicators were based on statistics while the remainder were based on an executive opinion survey.

The Philippines’ highest-ranked factor was knowledge at 50th, which was driven by the talent sub-factor.

The country’s lowest ranked factor was technology, at 58th.