Switzerland retains 5th place worldwide for digitalization

Switzerland has retained its position in fifth place from the previous year’s World Digital Competitiveness Ranking 2023. With the ranking, the World Competitiveness Centre (WCC) of Lausanne’s IMD Business School assesses how well national economies research and adapt new technologies. It compared a total of 64 countries. The USA climbed from second to first place, while the Netherlands was up four places to second, followed by Singapore and Denmark.

For the knowledge factor, which describes the expertise of an economy when it comes to discovering and implementing new technologies, Switzerland ranked first in the world. Last year, WCC Director, Arturo Bris, affirmed that the country was on its way to becoming “a fully developed digital nation”, but he recommended the introduction of an electronic identity.

This year, in a statement from the WCC, Bris described the individual attitude towards technology in Switzerland as “lagging”. He said: “It rejected the digital identity program, concerns about transparency are extremely high and digital banking isn’t as developed as in many other countries.” This distinguishes Switzerland from Singapore or the United Arab Emirates (12th place), he said.

In terms of digital transformation, “companies in Europe are not really doing any better this year than last and so it seems that the Next Generation digital funds from Europe have not yet transformed the digital culture,” according to Bris. Next Generation is the EU's 800 billion euros programme to create a greener, more digital and more resilient future. ce/mm