UK only fifth in world IT competitive league table?

A survey claims the US still leads the world in terms of "IT competitiveness" - with the UK coming in at fifth, behind Finland, Singapore and Sweden.

The UK has been downgraded because of lower numbers of students entering science courses at university.

The study, which has been running since 2007 and organised by the Business Software Alliance, a vendor body, and The Economist's Intelligence Unit, puts Uncle Sam at 80.5 and Iran last of a list of 66 with a composite score of 18.8.

The word 'composite' is important because the final ranking is based on a country's performance on a number of factors, ranging from "the general business environment," its existing ICT infrastructure, the skill level of the workforce, availability of research and development resources in industry, academia, and government, the legal environment and "the political support for the IT industry" in each nation state.

Thus Switzerland had the highest rating for its IT infrastructure in the set with 89.9, followed by Denmark at 87.2, the Netherlands at 84.3, Sweden at 83.3, Australia at 82.4, Norway at 80.2, Hong Kong at 79.7 and Canada at 76.9.

Singapore has gone up from 2007 markedly, as it has made substantial investments in infrastructure, while we Brits should take encouragement, perhaps, from the fact that we've apparently gone up a place since the 2010 study.

"The US is probably the world's best example of the virtues of long-term investment in the enablers of IT sector competitiveness," gushes the report, adding, "The US tops the index once again, its high scores across all categories reflecting not only the historical strength of its IT industry but also the high quality of its education and talent environments, its strong encouragement of innovation and entrepreneurialism, and its well-developed legal system.

In case this doesn't seem like the same country you see on the news every night, the writers do add, "Recent economic and fiscal problems have not dented its clear IT industry strengths."

"We're seeing the fast-growing economies of the developing world invest heavily in things like research and development and human capital. They are moving away from a more singular focus on providing low-cost products and services. Because of that, we are moving to a world with many centres of IT power," concludes the report.

China will produce an astonishing 400,000 graduates with some or heavy amounts of ICT in their CVs in 2011 and all can look forward to relatively good career prospects in their country, too.