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The UK has slipped three places down a global league table for IT competitiveness into sixth, ranking further below the US and no longer ahead of Europe. Despite excelling in some areas, such as the supply of IT skills and broadband, the UK’s IT competitiveness fell down on weaknesses in its R&D and legal activities. Its relatively low levels of public and private investment in R&D and of new IT patents registered, allowed Finland (2nd), Sweden (3rd) and the Netherlands (5th) to stay ahead or overtake. When the table was compiled last year, sixth place was taken by Canada – ranked fourth today – and first place, or the globe’s most IT competitive nation, went to the US. Despite the “emergence of protectionist impulses,” the superpower has retained its top ranking in 2009, said the Economist Intelligence Unit, which compiles the annual index. Given that the gap between the US and the UK has widened since 2008 , it seems a decision by American policymakers to act on these impulses is the UK’s only hope of toppling the US. “The ‘buy local’ provisions attached to some plans fail to recognise the global nature of the IT industry,” the Economist Intelligence Unit said in a statement to the research. “These and schemes to support ‘national champions’ or other struggling domestic producers will only prevent more innovative IT firms from being able to compete, and are likely to harm long-term sector competitiveness.” According to the index, which scores a country’s IT competitiveness out of 100 having analysed 26 IT environment indicators, the US scored 78.9, compared with 70.3 for the UK. Although the challenge for the UK of climbing nine points might not sound insurmountable, the US already has more than a five-point lead on its closest competitor, Finland. The disappointing ranking for the UK was in spite of it scoring well in IT industry development, broadband availability, government support and the education system’s capacity to train IT professionals. But alongside lacklustre investment in R&D, the UK’s legal environment dragged its IT prowess, primarily due to the UK being among a handful of countries yet to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime. In addition, the index’s authors cited evidence that the time and expenses of enforcing protection of intellectual property in the UK can be “prohibitive” for many of the IT sector’s small and mid-sized companies. The authors pointed to a testimonial saying that, typically, a patent proceeding in English court lasts 12-18 months, with a live cross examination of experts and trial of three weeks. In Germany, in contrast, the enforcement of IP rights can be over in half a day, partly explaining why costs for a case that would cost £1m in London might cost only €200,000 (£184,000) in Berlin. However one of the nation’s best known software firms, SAP, reserved its criticism for policy-makers, accusing them of failing to give the IT sector the support it deserved during the downturn. Chief communications officer Herbert Heitmann told the study that some governments were neglecting the importance of IT to their economies by preferring short-term boosts to other sectors. Attacking Germany’s car-scrapping scheme for that reason, he said: “It’s a big boost for manufacturers, but it is not sustainable: the industry will suffer again once the programme ends. “Policymakers should support technologies that are cross-vertical and designed to improve the competitiveness of various industries.” Yet, overall, the research into 66 separate economies found that most policymakers ‘rightly view’ the IT sector as an important engine of growth, the Economist Intelligence Unit said. Director of global technology research at the unit Denis McCauley said: “Globally, the IT sector has ridden out the crisis reasonably well, despite reduced technology spending. “Rather than pushing short-term measures designed to expand sector output or support ailing technology firms, policymakers need to remain focused on strengthening the fundamental enablers of long-term sector competitiveness.” But the content of education, one of the key enablers of IT competitiveness, must be up to scratch if the efforts of countries to make teaching facilities and resources widely available are to pay off. Francis Cripps, president of Alphametrics, a data systems consultancy, told the study that this meant teaching IT skills for their own sake should be erased from every nation’s curriculum. “My quarrel with the universities I visit is that they don’t think of IT as a business. They think of it as learning Java, and so the people who graduate have no idea how to use IT skills to build a business,” he said. “You need to learn about the business problems that IT software can address - such as accounting and administration - and combine that with pure IT studies before you can be really useful.” Sep 29, 2009 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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