2010 World Digital Economy - E-Government, E-Health and E-Education Trends

Digital economy important to key social services

Developments in digital technology are driving the changes occurring in key social services such as government, healthcare and education. These sectors continue to incorporate e-services and this in turn is providing the building blocks for the smart cities of the future. Many of the elements that will make up the smart cities already exist and are continuing to evolve and become more widely used.

In the context of the global crisis, we must now look at every opportunity to build smarter communities. These should incorporate cross-sector public safety, carbon neutral, state of the art communications networks, linked to a new generation of social services provided by government, such as e-government, e-health and e-education.

Developments in e-government, also known as Government 2.0 (Gov 2.0) not only comprise web-based developments but increasingly mobile applications (m-government). Citizens and application developers are becoming more involved in shaping this sector with one example including the movement towards conducting “App Contests” which request the general public to submit ideas for useful apps that would assist in improving government services.

The digital world also continues to influence the growth of e-education with a number of trends emerging in this sector. Cloud computing is beginning to be implemented for use at an operational level, resulting in infrastructure cost reductions and administration time. Mobile technology is also being utilised as an education tool, particularly by academic and healthcare organizations and is driven by the use of e-readers and mobile devices.

The most important sector that will benefit from developments in the digital economy is worldwide healthcare. BuddeComm believes that the alternative to not embracing e-health is to accept a significantly inferior healthcare service in the future. Countries that are lagging in broadband infrastructure developments are going to face, not just a telecoms dilemma – but, more importantly, they are going to face a health crisis.

The enormous success of fixed and mobile broadband in both the developed and the developing world is providing governments everywhere with the opportunity to transform the underlying digital infrastructure into a platform that can be used for unprecedented economic and social transformation in such areas such as healthcare, government processes, education, commerce, banking, environment, energy and transport. This annual report provides valuable insights and analysis into the key trends taking place in the e-government, e-health and e-education sectors. It explores future directions such as the increasing use of cloud computing and mobility for e-services. The report provides a unique perspective into how the digital economy is unfolding differently around the world by incorporating regional overviews written by BuddeComm’s senior analysts.

Examples of key insights:

• Around the world there are many smart city developments taking place with governments allocating billions of dollars for such initiatives.
• E-government initiatives in Eastern European EU countries have been guided by EU policy such as the Lisbon Programme and i2010.
• According to the 2010 UN e-government survey, the Oceania region rated 0.42 in the development index which was below the world average rating of 0.44.
• There is some evidence that while overall spending on enterprise training has declined in light of the economic downturn; spending on e-learning has grown, with more spending being directed towards this learning method than instructor-led training.
• Corporations are beginning to show interest in a trans-sector approach to the digital economy, with more companies becoming involved in new services for the broader digital economy, including e-education. One example includes News Corp, which recently purchased an education technology company.
• Although small compared with the world as a whole, e-education is a fast growing market in Latin America. Practically all Latin American countries have adopted some form of distance education as an essential tool to overcome schooling shortages and improve the quality of education.
• In all OECD countries total spending on healthcare is rising faster than economic growth.

Data in this report is the latest available at the time of preparation and may not be for the current year.