Global Digital Governance ｜ Trends of Global Digital Competitiveness in 2021

The long-delayed COVID-19 epidemic has once again highlighted the indispensable and extensive influence of digital technology on a global scale. The rise of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, 3D printing, augmented reality and virtual reality, and quantum computing is subverting the traditional economic and social operation mode and shaping new development opportunities. How a country responds to the various changes brought about by the technological revolution and establishes corresponding competitiveness around digital technology will not only determine its future economic growth, but also affect its geopolitical status. In this context, countries all over the world have put the digital transformation in the fields of economy, governance and life into the important agenda of the government, and increased resource input and policy support to improve their digital competitiveness.

Not long ago, the European Center for Digital Competitiveness of the European Advanced Business School (ESCP) released the Report on the Promotion of Global Digital Competitiveness in 2021 (Digital Riser Report 2021）。 The research report comprehensively uses the relevant data from the World Economic Forum, the World Bank and the International Telecommunication Union to evaluate and rank the current digital competitiveness of 137 countries around the world, and extracts the best practices of countries with rapidly rising digital competitiveness, so as to provide decision-making and action guidance for other countries. The relevant research conclusions have certain reference significance for countries around the world to understand the advantages and disadvantages of their digital transformation from a macro perspective and to calibrate the strategic direction of enhancing digital competitiveness.

The research report simplifies the definition of a country’s "digital competitiveness" as 10 equal weight factors in two categories: "digital ecosystem" and "digital thinking mode", and divides all countries into nine groups, namely, G7, G20 and Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, Europe and North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa defined by the World Economic Forum. On this basis, combined with the data of the three years from 2019 to 2021, it is scored and ranked. Among them, the elements belonging to the "digital ecosystem" include the difficulty of obtaining venture capital, the cost of starting a business, the time required for starting a business, the convenience of hiring international talents, and the digital skills of university graduates; The "digital thinking mode" includes the digital skills of the working population, the attitude towards entrepreneurial risks, the diversity of labor force, the scale of mobile broadband users, and the acceptance of subversive business development ideas by enterprises. The scoring results intuitively reflect the changes of digital competitiveness of countries in terms of sub-items and overall, while limiting the ranking to nine groups is to ensure that the comparison baseline is relatively fair and the results are comparable. By combing the relevant evaluation results, the report puts forward three main findings:

Nowadays, the global digital competitiveness is changing.

The research report shows that while the digital competitiveness of some countries and regions is rapidly improving, some leading digital countries in public perception are gradually losing their advantages. Taking China and the United States as two digital superpowers, for example, during 2019-2021, China’s digital competitiveness improved obviously (+211), while the United States showed a decline (-72). Moreover, whether in the G7 or G20 group, the ranking of the increase in digital competitiveness of the United States is in a relatively backward position. The analysis believes that the decline of digital competitiveness in the United States is mainly driven by the dimension of digital ecosystem, including a series of adverse effects such as increasing immigration and visa barriers, which makes it more difficult to attract international digital and information professionals. The promotion of China’s competitiveness is mainly reflected in its strong advantages in the dimension of digital thinking mode, including the proposal and deployment of a series of national overall strategic plans, and taking scientific and technological innovation and entrepreneurship as important measures to achieve high-quality development.

In addition to the United States, Britain (-85), Sweden (-92) and other developed countries in digital technology also failed to show a significant increase in digital competitiveness. India (-396), Germany (-176) and other big countries even experienced a sharp decline in competitiveness in both digital ecosystems and digital thinking modes. However, some countries, such as Georgia (+153), Egypt (+258), Canada (+47) and Vietnam (+339), which do not have a high digital starting point, have become the leaders in this field because they have implemented a series of fruitful digital transformation measures. To some extent, this shows that the global digital competitiveness pattern is in the process of dynamic reorganization, and new global digital technology leaders will appear in the future.

Digital competitiveness is closely related to digital transformation measures.

The research report collects the "Best Practice" of digital transformation in G7, G20 and seven regional economic groups whose digital competitiveness has increased significantly in the past three years, covering the actual progress in the fields of strategic planning, policy assistance, investment support and perfect supervision. For example, through the implementation of the "National Innovation and Skills Plan", Canada set up a strategic innovation fund for digital transformation, adding more than 70,000 jobs, driving more than 45 billion US dollars of investment, and injecting new vitality into the national economy; Vietnam pushes the "National Digital Transformation Plan in 2025", vigorously advocates the adoption of emerging digital technologies, builds a digital government, and sets a long-term goal that the digital economy will account for 30% of the national GDP by 2030; Egypt has vigorously promoted the "ICT 2030 Strategy" and the "Digital Egypt" plan, thus becoming the leader of digital transformation in the Middle East. Therefore, the report believes that the promotion of national digital competitiveness is closely related to the government’s clear long-term goal of digital transformation and leading the formulation and implementation of comprehensive planning for digital transformation.

To enhance digital competitiveness, we need to support digital innovation and entrepreneurship.

The research report found that countries with rapidly rising digital competitiveness pay great attention to attracting international talents, promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, and strengthening the education and training of digital skills. For example, Italy has established a legal framework to provide visa convenience and tax incentives for start-up companies and scientific and technological talents through the Entrepreneurship Law (ISA), thus attracting tens of thousands of start-up companies to register and operate in Italy in just three years; The Spanish government has launched a series of entrepreneurship support policies, including the Entrepreneurship Promotion Law, the establishment of a national entrepreneurship office, and the introduction of outstanding international talents. Georgia is actively implementing the "2017-2021 Strategy for the Unification of Education and Science" to promote the modernization of science, technology and innovation system.

In view of this, the research report emphasizes that each country needs to fully develop its own digital thinking mode and digital ecosystem, and pay attention to the speed and effectiveness of policy implementation in order to improve its digital competitiveness. At the same time, from the evaluation results of global digital competitiveness in 2021, under the influence of multiple factors, the speed of digital transformation varies greatly among different countries, and the global competition pattern around digital transformation also shows a rapid change trend, and there may be many possibilities in the future. Generally speaking, countries that attach importance to and vigorously promote digital transformation can basically make significant progress in a relatively short period of time. Even countries with weak digital foundation can realize the acceleration of digital transformation after taking appropriate actions and measures. Therefore, governments should attach great importance to and carefully consider the future strategic decision-making and management mode in this key field, and effectively promote digital transformation based on actual national conditions.