Israel Now Ranks First In World Digital Quality of Life Index

Israel has come in first in the annual Digital Quality of Life Index 2022. Out of 117 countries, Israel climbed to the first spot — overtaking Denmark’s two-year lead — from fourth in last year’s survey, and eighth in 2020. A report on this latest “first” for Israel is here.

The survey is compiled annually by the virtual private network provider Surfshark, based on factors such as internet affordability and quality, infrastructure and digital government services.

Denmark moved to second place, with Germany, France and Sweden rounding out the top five in the 2022 index. The Netherlands, Finland, Japan, the UK and South Korea came in next for the top 10. The US dropped to 12th place, behind Lithuania, from fifth last year.

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Congo, Yemen, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Cameroon had the worst showings and were in the bottom five countries.

The annual survey, now in its fourth year, evaluates countries based on a set of five “pillars” — internet affordability, internet quality, e-infrastructure, e-security and e-government — and 14 indicators such as internet speed, GDP per capita, mobile internet price and broadband internet price. The study is based on open-source information provided by the United Nations, World Bank, Freedom House, International Communications Union and other sources.

In the 2022 survey, Israel boasted the most affordable mobile internet access in the world. The index looked at the number of hours people had to work per month to afford access and found that Israelis can buy 1GB of mobile internet for as little as 5 seconds of work per month, 58 times less than in the US. Broadband internet affordability was more expensive, at 19 minutes of work, but better than the global average of six hours of work.

Also in 2022, Israel for the first time was ranked No. 10 in the Global Innovation Index, meaning it is among the world’s most innovative economies. This will come as no surprise to those who follow the stories from the Start-Up Nation, describing Israeli advances in computer hardware and software, electric vehicles, long-life batteries, medical technology, cyber security and cyber warfare, water creation, agriculture, drones, anti-missile defenses, avionics, and much, much more. Nearly every week another Israeli company becomes a “unicorn,” meaning that after its IPO, it has a valuation of more than one billion dollars. More Israeli companies are listed on the NY Stock Exchange than those of any other nation except China. More U.S. patents are held by Israelis than by people from any other country except the Japanese. And the pace of the Jewish state’s innovation keeps increasing.

More on this latest achievement for the tiny state is reported on here.

Israel breaks into the top 10 of the most innovative economies in the world for the first time, after several years of increased performance. Between 2018 and 2019, the rank increase for Israel is a mix of improved performance and better innovation data becoming available.

The economy remains number 1 in the Northern Africa and Western Asia region. It stands out for producing more innovation outputs relative to its level of innovation investments.

Israel keeps its position in the top 10 worldwide in the GII areas that measure the sophistication of the business sector and the quantity and quality of innovation outcomes.

In particular, Israel is world leader in the indicators related to research and development (R&D) – such as Researchers, Gross R&D expenditures, R&D performed by business, and Research talent,- and in the indicators related to information and communication technologies (ICTs) and on-line creativity, including ICT services exports, Wikipedia edits, and Mobile app creation.

Other indicators where Israel ranks in the top 3 include Patent families[sic] in two or more offices – a notable performance increase relative to last year – University/industry research collaboration, R&D financed by [sic] abroad , and Venture capital deals.

The cluster of Tel Aviv – Jerusalem makes it to the top 100 of the world’s top science and technology clusters, ranking 23rd this year.

What strikes one is that Israeli businesses plow back a greater percentage of their wealth into research and development than do businesses in any other country. In every category involving research– Researchers, Gross R&D expenditures, R&D by business, size of research talent, Israel comes in first place. Israel also does well in other categories, including patents, university/research collaborations, R&D financed from abroad: the world’s investors have been quick to put their money into Israeli innovations; every major American tech company now has an office in Israel, taking advantage of the country’s main resource — its brainpower. That resource – unlike the oil and gas of the Arabs – does not decrease over time. If anything, Israel’s pool of technological talent seems to have deepened, as reflected in its advances in every aspect of high tech. No doubt the more than one million Russian Jews who arrived in Israel since the l1980s, many of them highly-educated engineers, mathematicians, and scientists, have contributed to the ever-increasing amount of innovation that Israel has been experiencing. And these new immigrants have also staffed institutions of higher learning, turning out graduates who constitute a very deep bench for Israeli innovation.

In the stability of its democratic institutions and its solicitude for human rights, in the happiness of its people, in the innovations in its economy, Israel is judged by others to be either at the top, or near the top, in the list of the world’s countries. Not a bad record for a country so tiny that is scarcely discernible on the world map, and that has to expend so much time, money, and brainpower (think of Mossad and Shin Bet) to keep the country safe from the many millions of people who would love to remove the Jewish State from the face of the earth.

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