IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Singapore has gained two places to become the only Asian city among the top five smartest cities in the world in 2024.

The index, produced by the Swiss business school Institute for Management Development (IMD), lists 142 cities in all, ranking them on the basis of how they use advanced technology for improvement in the lives of the citizens.

Synopsis: The Smart City Index 2025 highlights global leaders like Zurich and Dubai, driven by technology, governance, and citizen well-being. While European and Middle Eastern cities excel, Indian cities face challenges of infrastructure, housing, and governance. Bridging these gaps is vital to achieving sustainable, competitive, and inclusive urban growth.

The worldwide quest for citizen-friendly, technology-led smart cities is accelerating, with cities looking to improve livability, governance, and sustainability. The IMD Smart City Index 2025 ranked Zurich first as a model of excellence, while Indian cities face significant challenges. This article analyses India’s rankings and explores opportunities for urban development.

Saudi Arabia capital Riyadh has jumped 18 placesto finish 53rd out of 109 in a list of the world’s smartest cities.

Globally, Singapore, Helsinki and Zurich came out on top of the index in a year that saw many European cities fall.

Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi and Dubai have emerged as the smartest cities in the region.

A new ranking focuses on how citizens perceive the priorities and effectiveness of smart city initiatives.

A new ranking from the Institute for Management Development (IMD) and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) focuses on how citizens perceive the scope and impact of efforts to make their cities ‘smart’.

South Korea is the world’s most advanced economy in terms of information and communications technology, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland.

Europe does well in the list, compiled by the United Nations agency, the International Telecommunication Union, on the eve of its ITU Telecom conference in Dubai.

SA now ranks only 47th, lagging behind Tunisia, which is Africa’s most highly placed nation in 35th position. Mauritius and Botswana have also slipped down by making less progress than other emerging nations.

The survey examined globally the quick and continuous adoption of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

Digital governance is the degree to which a website -- in this instance those of 100 large cities worldwide -- enhances citizens' ability to learn about and participate in governmental affairs. New York's website was ranked first worldwide in terms of content.

South Africa was ranked 70th out of 114 countries in the World Economic Forum (WEF) global information technology report released on Wednesday. Rankings are determined — among other things — by a country’s regulatory and business environment, the use of information and communication technology (ICT) and its effect on the economy and society.

The index ranks South Africa ahead of Kenya and Egypt as the African country most ready to embrace mobile government services.

Despite South Africa’s appearance at the top of the index, the analysts noted that until now mobile government implementations have been far slower to take off there than in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania.

The U.N. E-Government Survey, a biannual assessment of all 192 member states' government web infrastructure, rated the South Korean government's comprehensive online infrastructure as the best in the world, after giving the top rank in the government's website level and user involvement level.

South Korea is most effective in e-governance in Asia while Laos the least effective, according to the recent survey by UN Data Center.

According to the UN report, the e-government survey measures e-government effectiveness in the delivery of public services and identifies patterns in e-government development and performance.

Even the most analog-loving Korean enjoys some benefits of the country’s advanced IT systems. They just may not know it.

Take the urbanite who whips out a T-Money pass to get to work. These plastic cards, which are used to pay for buses, subways, cabs, convenience store purchases and some expressway tolls in and around Seoul, come equipped with a central processing unit.

South Korea fell to the third place from the first in the 2016 e-government survey with the country’s human capital index moving down by 12 spots.

The UN compiles the e-government survey and releases the index every two years after the evaluation of member countries’ e-government levels. It had revealed six core assessment items every time before the launch of evaluations. The e-government evaluation standards of the 2016 United Nations (UN) survey, however, were undisclosed.

South Korea has once again been named the world’s most advanced ICT economy according to the latest annual study from the International Telecommunications Union, which had good news for the UK too as it crept up into the top ten.

The ITU’s Measuring the Information Society 2012 report is intended to provide a snapshot of global tech development and point out which countries need to try harder. Page 21 includes a full list of countries including last year's ranking for comparison.

Korea topped the global ICT Development Index (IDI) released on September 15 by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an agency of the United Nations responsible for ICT.

For the annual report, “Measuring the Information Society 2011,” ITU compiled this year’s IDI by ranking 152 countries’ access to, use of, and skills with ICT and comparing the results to their 2008 and 2010 scores.

The data released this week by the ITU ranks South Korea as the world’s most advanced ICT economy, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland. Of the top top-ranked countries, eight are from Europe. Japan is the other non-European country to make the chart, and the UK sneaks in at number nine.

The ITU report, entitled ‘Measuring the Information Society 2012’, was released in Geneva on 11 October. For the second year in a row, Korea was ranked as the world’s most advanced ICT economy, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland.

The survey, which was completed in December 2009, charted the role e-government has played in increasing public trust, boosting transparency through the free sharing of government data, and speeding up public service delivery and regulatory reform at a time of economic crisis.