NZ leads region in IT use and productivity

By ROB O'NEILL*

The current stellar performance of the US dollar is just the latest confirmation that knowledge and the effective use of IT have become the principal drivers of growth in the new economy.

The Australian Treasurer has acknowledged as much, saying the poor performance of the Australian currency could in part be attributed to that country's failure to generate a significant global IT company.

The importance of IT to economic wellbeing can no longer be doubted, and that means new performance measures must be developed to gauge the effectiveness of IT use.

In that cause, I have been updating a study from last year to measure the relative levels of IT penetration and productivity across the Asia-Pacific region. The results could be a surprise to those who wail and gnash over New Zealand's alleged failure as a knowledge economy.

For the second year in a row, New Zealand leads in both IT productivity and penetration.

The gauge works like this: from a database of corporate IT users, we extract data on the number of staff, the number of IT staff and the number of screens deployed in the organisation.

We then work out the ratio of screens to IT staff to measure the internal efficiency of the IT users, and compare the number of screens to the total number of staff to measure IT penetration.

New Zealand, with an average of nearly 59 screens a 100 staff, leads the IT penetration stakes from Hong Kong (58.12) and Australia (50.87). It also leads in IT productivity, with each IT staff member supporting nearly 27 screens, followed by Singapore (25.5) and Australia (24.2).

Now the penetration and efficient use of IT may not be the same as producing a world-beating IT (and telecommunications) company such as Finland's Nokia, but there is a lot to take pride from in those figures.

We have the infrastructure in place to produce high-value, knowledge-based products. We also manage that infrastructure exceedingly well.

And how about this: New Zealand is the only country in which the levels of IT penetration in small companies exceed that in large corporates. IT penetration among the smallest 100 companies on the database was 73 screens per 100 staff.

And it's something we should all know: when it comes to generating growth, small companies are where the action is.

* Rob O'Neill is a research analyst with Strategic Research. He can be contacted at robo@strategicpublishing.com.