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46 The Network Society
puters, as well as the cost, quality and reliability of service. 3 These data
are corroborated by other sources such as the OECD figures (Figure
1) or the World Economic Forum, whose ranking is analyzed below.
Continuing with the comparisons in terms of competitiveness, the
Global Competitiveness Report (2004) produced by the World
Economic Forum employs a ranking system based on three indexes:
technology, quality of public institutions and macro-economic environment.
4 The GCI index reflects the balance between technological
development and adoption and the reliability of the public institutions
and macroeconomic environment.
3
Connectivity and information technologies: measures the use of the basic telephone network,
the mobile network, the Internet and the use of computers, as well as the cost, quality and
reliability of services. Business environment: evaluate the general business climate in a country,
including the strength of the economy, political stability, the regulatory environment,
taxation, competition policy, the labour market, the quality of infrastructure and openness
to trade and investment. Consumer and business adoption: assesses how prevalent e-business
practices are in each country, i.e. how the Internet is used to automate traditional business
processes and how companies are helped by the development of logistics and online payment
systems and the availability of finance and state investment in information technologies.
Legal and policy environment: assesses a country’s legal framework and the specific laws
governing Internet use—how easy is it to register new businesses, how strong is protection
of private property, and whether the governments support the creation of an Internet-conducive
legal environment or are more concerned with censoring content and controlling
access. Social and cultural environment: evaluates the literacy and basic education, which are
preconditions for being able to use the new technologies, experience using the Internet and
receptivity to it and the technical skills of the workforce. Finally, the existence of supporting
e-services: the existence of consulting and IT services, the existence of back-office solutions
and consistent industry-wide standards for platforms and programming languages.
4
The technology index is obtained using a set of data with differentiated weighting. The measured
variables are Internet access in schools, whether the state of competition between ISPs
is sufficient for guaranteeing high quality, low failure rates and low prices, whether the government
programmes are successful or not in promoting the use of the information technologies
and whether the legislation on e-commerce, digital signatures, consumer
protection are developed and enforced. Furthermore, mobile phone penetration and the
number Internet users, Internet hosts, telephone lines and personal computers are also
measure; the public institutions index is measured on the independence of the judicial system
in relation to political power, citizens and companies, whether the property rights, including
movable goods, are well defined and protected by law, whether the state is impartial in
awarding public contracts and whether or not organized crime constitutes a high cost to
economic activity. Also measured are corruption dimensions, in particular to what extent
bribery is common for achieving import and export authorizations, access to public assets
and avoiding taxation; the macro-economic environment index is based the probability of the
economy experiencing recession in the coming year and to what extent access to credit for
companies is more or less difficult than the previous year. Also assessed are the state debts
or surpluses in the preceding year, as well as the savings, inflation and exchange rates and
the spread for loans and financial applications. Two further factors assessed are the country’s
rating in terms of international credit and to what extent the state supplies necessary goods
and services not supplied by the market and distortive government subsidies.