Published on the 06/10/2022 | Written by Heather Wright

And Digital Quality of Life paints even bleaker picture for both…

New Zealand and Australia have scored ‘runner up’ status in the United Nations biennial eGovernment listings for 2022, despite Australia continuing its gradual slide down the rankings  though still claiming the number one spot globally for human capital.

The United Nations e-Government Survey 2022 has New Zealand climbing to fourth from eighth position in 2020, while Australia has dropped to seventh from fifth.

Many are still falling short in providing adequate online services.

Australia’s ongoing decline comes just four years after being ranked second in the world in the UN eGovernment Development Index (EGDI), which ranks the 193 UN member states based on the scope and quality of online services.

Dragging Australia down was telecommunications infrastructure, where the country ranked outside the top 20. But Australia is topping the bill when it comes to human capital, which looks at adult literacy, education enrolments and years of schooling.

New Zealand too, was hampered by telecommunications infrastructure rankings, only just eeking ahead of Australia to claim regional leader status. The rankings are weighted averages, relative to other UN member states, rather than being absolute measurements. Topping the telecommunications segment globally is Liechtenstein.

The online service index component, which covers whole-of-government approaches, open government data, e-participation, multi-channel service delivery, mobile services, usage uptake and digital divides saw a decline for Australia, continuing a trend started in 2018.

That’s seen New Zealand claim regional leader status – with A/NZ part of 14 nation Oceania, alongside the likes of Fiji, Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Papua New Guinea, rather than Asia Pacific – from Australia for the ‘online service index’ component.

Despite the drops, both New Zealand and Australia are dubbed ‘world leaders’ in e-government development by the report. 

It says governments around the world are making progress on the provision of online services for citizens, remaining committed to pursuing digital government strategies, but that many are still falling short in providing adequate online services. 

Affordability and digital literacy were major barriers for those countries whose performance was below-par.

Denmark, Finland and the South Korea topped the rankings, scoring highly on telecommunications infrastructure and the digital skills of their populations, along with the digital services offered by government.

Sweden, Iceland,  Estonia, the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Japan and Malta all scored runner up status alongside NZ and Australia. 

Counties with the lowest EGDI scores share what the report calls ‘special and developing situations’.

The report makes note of New Zealand having focused on making websites more accessible to people with disabilities, a focus for the United Nations with its Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, but something it says relatively little headway has been made on in more than a decade. 

Globally the average eGovernment Development Index value has risen slightly, from 0.5988 in 2020 to 0.6102 in 2022. Both New Zealand and Australia feature in the ‘very high EGDI’ category.

In the midst of war, Ukraine is one of just four countries to move from the ‘high’ to ‘very high’ category, alongside Serbia, Peru and Georgia.

For the first time the report also looks at the status of local e-government in the most populous cities in each country. That saw Auckland ranked 19th equal with Iceland’s Reykjavik, with Sydney coming in at 34th equal with Warsaw, Oslo, Riyadh and Zagreb.

Madrid and Berlin top the local government list.

The UN report comes as another report, The Digital Quality of Life Index, from VPN provider Surfshark, puts New Zealand at 24th out of 117 countries, and Australia at 35th – a stunning drop from first place in 2019.

Poor mobile and broadband stability were again a factor in driving Australia’s placing down, with Australia performing weakest on internet quality where it was ranked 58th, down 51 places on 2021. 

New Zealand too, was on a downward slide, dropping five positions from last year’s 23rd place ranking. Its 48th place for internet affordability puts it behind the global average and means it needs to improve by 1050 percent to match best ranking Israel. Australia too, is well ahead, ranking 10th for internet affordability. 

Internet quality, however, gave New Zealand its highest positioning in the survey, at 17th.

On the electronic government side, Australia flipped the UN results to come out seventh, while New Zealand was 18th. 

Israel ranked top for the Digital Quality of Life Index, followed by Denmark and Germany.