New Zealand Institute for the study of competition and regulation inc.

Abstract

In The State of e-New Zealand: 12 Months On, we revisit the measures of New Zealand's preparedness to utilise and capitalise upon the economic and social benefits promised by the uses of electronic infrastructures addressed in our November 2000 paper The State of e-New Zealand. We acknowledge the considerable difficulties in measuring and assessing the complete range of
benefits arising from the use of these technologies, given that the ultimate effects of their use are hard to separate out from other factors. Hence, we once again test our hypothesis: that if New Zealand is performing at the international forefront of infrastructure indicators, then there is every reason to believe that, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is performing well also in those areas where no measurable or reliable indicators of performance are available. Once more, we find support for our hypothesis. New Zealand remained at the forefront of practically all publicly-available electronic infrastructure indicators throughout 2000 and into 2001. In particular, the comparative advantage identified over Australia in the 2000 report is largely maintained.