Switzerland is becoming more digitally competitive
Switzerland climbed three places in the IMD ranking of the most digitally competitive countries, moving up to second place. It made progress in the areas of cyber security, e-participation and high-tech exports.
It was enough for a promotion, but not for the top spot. In this year's World Digital Competitiveness Ranking published by the Lausanne-based management institute IMD, Switzerland took second place, just behind Singapore. This is Switzerland's best ever position in the ranking - last year it was in fifth place, behind Denmark, Singapore, the Netherlands and the USA, which was still in first place at the time.
This year, Denmark moves up one place to third. The USA slips down to fourth place and Sweden moves up from seventh to fifth place.
Improvement in exports, e-participation and cybersecurity
Switzerland made progress in terms of high-tech exports (9th place), e-participation (moving up 11 positions to 27th place) and cybersecurity (11th place), according to a joint press release from IMD and Digitalswitzerland. "By further improving cybersecurity measures and promoting citizen engagement in digital spaces, Switzerland can expand its leading role in the digital age," says Christos Cabolis, Chief Economist at IMD's World Competitiveness Center (WCC).
The authors of the ranking divide the results into the factors "knowledge", "technology" and "future viability" and these in turn into sub-factors. Switzerland remains at the top in the "knowledge" factor and improved in both the "technology" (fourth place) and "future viability" (fifth place) factors. According to the press release, Switzerland continues to perform very well in the sub-factors "skilled workers" (third place), "legal framework" (second place) and "business flexibility" (seventh place), and shows notable improvements in the sub-factors "research location" (second place) and "technological framework" (seventh place).
Malus in terms of training and further education and IT integration
On the other hand, Switzerland's position has deteriorated in the areas of "education and training" (8th place) and "IT integration" (7th place) - in each case by one place compared to the previous year. Switzerland performs particularly poorly in comparison with the other 66 countries in terms of the speed of wireless broadband connections. In this respect, it only achieved 52nd place.
"Switzerland still has room for improvement," Franziska Barmettler, CEO of Digitalswitzerland, is quoted as saying in the press release. "Digital identity is already a reality in other countries and the electronic patient file is still a long way off." Such projects require not only investment, but also trust in technologies, data security and institutions. "The focus must be on building trust so that Switzerland can remain competitive."
The private business school IMD has been compiling the World Digital Competitiveness Ranking annually since 2017 and, according to its own information, is based on various statistics and opinion polls - with the aim of determining the digital competitiveness of 67 countries on a comparable basis. Selected results for Switzerland are presented by IMD online (PDF) ready (Joël Orzet/rja)
