The top government leaders of the G20 nations are meeting this week-end in Brisbane, Australia. It’s an occasion to hear (and watch) U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese President Xi JinPing, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Instead, maybe everyone should be listening more closely to South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper – because these nations are among those setting the global pace of ICT development, which we believe will lead to long-term economic and societal development.
South Korea, in fact, leads the world in our rankings, which integrate several measures of technology and societal development into a unique mix that empasizes relative performance – that is, how well are the 103 nations we survey doing with the resources they have? How quickly are they being developed – not just growing economically, but developing societally – on a relative basis?
Among the G20 nations, South Korea is followed in our rankings by the UK, Germany, Canada, and Japan.
So it’s fair to say that people should also heed the words of UK Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, both of whom carry substantial influence on the world stage. But it’s important to note that the US, Russia, and China finish 8th, 10th, and 18th respectively among the G20.
This economic club of nations represents about 85% of the global economy. Its members include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK, the US, and the EU.
The G20 doesn’t strictly include the world’s top 20 economies (sorry about that, Netherlands and Spain), as it seeks to balance all the world’s regions. Including the EU as a member re-balances the exclusion of some large European countries.
The bottom tier of this group includes Italy, Argentina, Russian, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. These nations could benefit from witnessing the leaders’ commitment to ICT and how it is working to maintain the developed nations and transform the developing nations.
We have significant data and numeros, diverse rankings on all 103 nations that we survey. Our leaders possess a wide range of resources, population sizes, locations, and internal dynamics. There is no one way that they achieved this leadership. But they are all laying down relatively robust ICT infrastructures, often with the transformation and disruption that this implies.
We’re able to create custom reports for government, business, and NGO leaders who would like to know more.