Sunday, September 03, 2006

TAIWAN ENDEAVORS TO IMPROVE E-COMPETITIVENESS WORLD RANKING

Taipei, Sep. 1 (CNA) Taiwan is not content with being ranked seventh in the world for e-Competitiveness and will strive to challenge the top five placeholders with its new initiative "Ubiquitous Networks Society" (UNS) , an official said at a forum Friday.

Taiwan will progress from the 2002 "e-Taiwan" initiative to "M-Taiwan, " (mobile Taiwan) which was launched last year, and eventually accomplish the UNS project, said Executive Yuan Minister of State Lin Feng-chin at the Asia-Pacific e-Competitiveness Forum.

The Ubiquitous Network Society will try to achieve four goals -- establish a high-speed Internet network, establish basic laws to regulate an Internet society, develop killer applications to promote an IT-enabled service industry and challenge the top five countries in e-readiness, Lin elaborated.

Forum participants spoke highly of Taiwan's e-readiness but agreed there is still room for improvement.

Taiwan was ranked 7th among 115 countries in the 2006 Network Readiness Index (NRI) conducted by the World Economic Forum, said Irene Mia, a WEF senior economist. Taiwan placed only behind Singapore -- which ranked second in the world -- among Asia-Pacific nations.

One sign of Taiwan's great success is that the WEF's annual report featured Taiwan as a case study for the second consecutive year, Mia said, noting the key role played by Taiwan's government in pursuing and funding the strategic vision of long-term information and communication technology (ICT) as a public-private partnership.

Taiwan did not fare as well in another ranking system, finishing 23rd in the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) latest e-readiness listing, said Denis McCauly, Director of EIU's Global Technology Research.

The EIU ranking evaluated 68 countries and calculated results using 100 quantitative and qualitative indicators.