Australia has climbed one place in global digital competitiveness rankings, helped by AI research prowess and its front-footed policy making for the technology, as other indicators stagnate.
The latest edition of the World Digital Competitiveness Ranking by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) puts Australia in 15th position, up from 16th of 67 in 2023.
The rankings, released by the Swiss-based business school on Thursday, show the country’s relative strengths lie with its credit rating (1), the net flow of international students (2) and the ease of starting a business (5).
Australia also performed well in protection against software piracy (5), digital government services (8) and in AI policies – one of two new indicators designed to measure competency in AI.
CEDA senior economist Melissa Wilson said the country’s performance would have been worse if not for the two newly introduced indicators – the other of which measures the number of AI articles published per capita. CEDA partners with IMD on the report.
“Australia was 8 on a count of AI policies passed into law, and 13 on a measure of peer-reviewed literature on AI,” she said.
Australia’s worst performance was on internet bandwidth speed, where it ranked 50th and which over previous reports has been a “consistent area of weakness”, according to Ms Wilson.
But this came with its own benefits, with Australia ranking 1st for the number of mobile broadband subscribers, lifting Australia’s overall technology ranking to 11 – higher than knowledge (13) or future readiness (20).
The number of graduates in science (49), government cybersecurity capacity (46) and communications technology (45) were among the other weaknesses highlighted in the report.
“Despite our improvements on technology, Australia’s overall future readiness remains poor, with continued low rankings on the agility of companies (39) and their ability to respond quickly to opportunities and threats (37),” Ms Wilson said.
“These results are consistent with previous CEDA work showing Australian businesses must get better at seizing new opportunities, rather than just focussing on business as usual.”
Australia’s best result in the rankings was in 2022, when it placed 14th, while its worst was in 2021 (20). It’s performance since then is largely unchanged, averaging a score of 15 – a score it also received in 2020.
Singapore climbed two places to top the rankings in 2024, followed by Switzerland and Denmark. The United States – which ranked first in four of the last five years – fell to fourth.
The World Digital Competitiveness Ranking was first published by IMD in 2017. It takes into account three main factors – knowledge, technology and future readiness – and relies on hard data and survey responses.
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