Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

Here is the e-readiness rank 2006 from the Economist Intelligence Unit, Canada advanced into top 10! China and India both dropped.

2006 / 2005 / Country / 2006 score / 2005 score
1 / 1 / Denmark / 9.00 / 8.74
2 / 2 / US / 8.88 / 8.73
3 / 4 / Switzerland / 8.81 / 8.62
4 / 3 / Sweden / 8.74 / 8.64
5 / 5 / UK / 8.64 / 8.54
6 / 8 / Netherlands / 8.60 / 8.28
7 / 6 / Finland / 8.55 / 8.32
8 / 10 / Australia / 8.50 / 8.22
9 / 12 / Canada / 8.37 / 8.03
10 / 6 / Hong Kong / 8.36 / 8.32
...
53 / 49 / India / 4.25 / 4.17
...
57 / 54 / China / 4.02 / 3.85

Most of the e-readiness scores have been increased, which is a good indication of overall improvement in the information technology growth globally.

Broadband penetration is becoming less of a distinction among e-readiness leaders. In China (ranked 57th) and India (53rd), companies are increasingly investing in open source software as a cost-effective way into next-general IT platforms. The vast majority of email services in Chinese businesses, for example, reportedly run on Linux-based software.

Some key factors being used the e-readiness measurements include:
Broadband Internet Access, Mobile Internet Access, Wireless Technologies, VOIP (Voice over IP), Software Development Infrastructures (both commercial and open source).

For more information on 2006 e-readiness, click here.

* NEW * 2006 e-readiness rankings available here

The e-readiness rankings is an annual ranking system over the world's 60 largest economies. It is a measure of the country's e-business environment. But of cause the numbers may also indicate how amenable a market is to Internet-based opportunities. The research studies over 100 quantitative and qualitative criteria across 6 distinct categories. I personally think the collected figures may be fluctuate in a quite large range. Plus it is meaningless to compare a smaller regional economie vs a much larger one (HK vs entire Mainland China, should be HK vs Shanghai etc.). But it is a good enough data to represent how well the government has done over all in the past years on supporting technology growth in the regions.

				        e-Readiness Ranking
Country		Score(2004)		2004	2003	2002	
Denmark		8.28			1	2	7
UK		8.27			2	3	3
Sweden		8.25			3	1	4
Norway		8.11			4	7	11
Finland		8.08			5	6	10
USA		8.04			6	3	1
Singapore	8.02			7	12	11
Netherlands	8.00			8	3	2
Hong Kong	7.97			9	10	14
Switzerland	7.96			10	8	4
Canada		7.92			11	10	9
Australia	7.88			12	9	6
Germany		7.83			13	13	8
Korea		7.73			14	16	21
Austria		7.68			15	14	13
...
China           3.96                    52      50

For the full report, please read the original document:
http://graphics.eiu.com/files/ad_pdfs/ERR2004.pdf