Qatar has been ranked 27th among the most networked nations in the world and second among Arab countries in the 2016 edition of the “Global Information Technology Report” (GITR) published by the World Economic Forum, in partnership with Insead and Cornell University.
According to the report, the UAE ranked 26th, while Bahrain and Saudi Arabia rank 28th and 33rd, respectively.
The report, themed “Innovating in the Digital Economy” and covers 139 economies, has measured the drivers of the ICT revolution globally since 2001.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications said Qatar is paying “considerable attention” to its ICT sector as a catalyst that “greatly contributes to achieving the Qatar National Vision 2030, an attitude that explains its high rankings on the GITR 2016, which is out this year.”
On the Environment subindex, which includes nine indicators measuring the political, regulatory, and business and innovation environments, Qatar ranked first among all Arab economies and advanced to 15th position in the world.
On the same subindex, the UAE ranked 19th, while Saudi Arabia and Bahrain ranked 28th and 35th, respectively.
Qatar also leads the Arab world and ranked fourth and second worldwide on the two indicators of “efficiency of legal system in settling disputes” and “efficiency of legal system in challenging regulations,” after it was ranked sixth and fourth in last year’s edition of the report.
Qatar also ranked third in the world in the “laws relating to ICTs” indicator.
On the Usage subindex, Qatar ranked second at the Arab level and 19th worldwide. Usage subindex measures technology adoption and usage by the three groups of stakeholders – government, business sector, and the population at large.
On the indicator that measures technology adoption and usage by individuals and ICT companies, Qatar ranked 23rd and 25th, respectively, and fifth globally on the indicator measuring technology adoption and usage by government.
Furthermore, Qatar came third at the Arab level behind Bahrain and Kuwait and 54th globally on the Readiness subindex, which measures networked readiness in terms of ICT infrastructure, affordability, and skills. That is a point of weakness because, according to the report, tariffs of mobile services and fixed broadband internet are relatively high.
However, Qatar ranks first among all Arab economies in terms of mobile network coverage.
The GITR 2016 places Qatar at the ninth position globally in terms of ICT use for business-to-business transactions. This agrees with the outcomes contained in the recently-released “Qatar’s ICT Landscape 2016: Business” Report, which showed a considerable rise in ICT adoption and usage by businesses across the country.
The Global Information Technology Report series and the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) were launched by the World Economic Forum in 2001. This represented one of the first attempts to make conceptual sense of the complex information and communication technologies (ICT) reality, identifying the common factors that enable countries to use technology effectively.