[LINK] Digital Quality of Life

Wed Aug 14 17:08:01 AEST 2019

Yes indeed Roger .. and also here’s responses from another forum where this research has been discussed ..

“Australia has the highest Digital Quality of Life (DQL), with a 0.7992 index value. This high score was mainly determined by a very high affordability of mobile internet, comparatively high mobile internet speeds, and a solid level of cybersecurity in the country. However, the score could have been higher if not for Australia’s underdeveloped broadband infrastructure, which ranked the country in the lower end of corresponding indicators of broadband speed and affordability. This makes it an exception, since among the selected countries for DQL 2019, Australia is ninth in GDP per capita and has the fifth highest average net-wage.

Australia’s average mobile internet speed is 57.71 Mbps and its average broadband speed is 34.26 Mbps. This makes Australia one of the few indexed countries in which mobile internet is faster than broadband. Also, one only has to work 21 seconds to afford the cheapest 1GB of mobile internet and 1.36 hours for the cheapest broadband package. Additionally, Australia ranks high because of well-developed e-government services (OSI score of 0.9722), its cybersecurity (GCI score of 0.8900), as well as comparatively extensive legislation on personal data protection. Finally, the most popular forms of entertainment content, namely Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube Premium, and internet porn, are all available for unrestricted access from within the country. Even though the weighting factor of the significance of availability of entertainment content is on the lower end in the scope of this research, it is important to note that people living in around two-thirds of the indexed countries do not have unrestricted access to at least one of the four researched services.

The research also revealed that although labelled as personal data protection laws, in some countries, their intention can be considered as equivocal. However, as explained in the Methodology section of this study, potential implications of such laws were not investigated in more detail due to the legal complexity of the topic. An exceptional case is the country that received the overall highest DQL index score, Australia. Although it received the highest indicator score for the presence of personal data laws, recent legislative developments and the encryption backdoor law passed in the Parliament of Australia might reflect poorly on the digital quality of life there in future.”

From: Roger Clarke<mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au>
Sent: Wednesday, 14 August 2019 4:44 AM
To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au<mailto:link at mailman.anu.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [LINK] Digital Quality of Life

> Global Research: 65 Countries’ Digital Quality of Life
 > ... https://surfshark.com/dql-report.pdf ...
 > Highest  DIGITAL QUALITY OF LIFE
 > 1. Australia
 > We indexed Digital Quality of Life (DQL) based on the internet speed
& affordability (broadband and mobile), the presence of personal data
protection laws, the state of e-government, the variety & availability
of e-entertainment, and the advancement of

Starting with an obvious issue, the criterion of "the presence of
personal data protection laws" is laughable.

Firstly, it's a completely inadequate proxy for the real need, which is
for comprehensive data protection laws, effective enforcement
mechanisms, enforcement resources and actual enforcement.

Secondly, Australia has what are arguably the world's weakest data
protection laws, 3 of 8 subsidiary jurisdictions that have either no
laws or no laws of consequence, the world's weakest enforcement
mechanisms, and the world's weakest data protection commissioners, both
in terms of the powers at their disposal and their exercise of such
powers as they have.

Assessing "internet speed & affordability" is a complex matter, but a
great many people, consumers and policy-watchers alike, would be
flabbergasted by what appears to be a remarkably high score.

The "advancement of cybersecurity" is also hilariously off the beam,
given the ongoing failure of almost all government agencies to comply
with the requirements of cybersecurity agencies, the abject failure of
data protection commissioners to define baseline security requirements,
the ongoing flood of data breaches, and the abject failure of data
protection commissioners to take firm action against *any* organisations
within their field of view.

And then there's the small matter of such things as "the variety &
availability of e-entertainment", and the vulnerability of consumer
devices, being largely international rather than national phenomena.

The quality of the PDF is pretty good.  But the quality of the design
and the results is ridiculously low.

The company gives its address as Tortola, BVI.  I had a client there
quite some years ago.  It's a funny little corner of the world, and a
tax haven, sorry, 'a low-documentation jurisdiction' (their own term).

__________________

On 14/8/19 1:36 am, Stephen Loosley wrote:
>
> Global Research: 65 Countries’ Digital Quality of Life
>
> Digital experience varies wildly around the world. That’s why, together with an expert panel, Surfshark analyzed and ranked 65 countries which represent over 70% of global population, or around 5.5 billion people.
>
> Highest  DIGITAL QUALITY OF LIFE
>
> 1. Australia
> 2. France
> 3. Singapore
> 4. Norway
> 5. Japan
> 6. Canada
> 7. Denmark
> 8. South Korea
> 9. Italy
> 10. Sweden
>
> We indexed Digital Quality of Life (DQL) based on the internet speed & affordability (broadband and mobile), the presence of personal data protection laws, the state of e-government, the variety & availability of e-entertainment, and the advancement of cybersecurity.
>
> Ref: https://surfshark.com/dql
> Ref: https://www.pcmag.com/news/370133/us-comes-in-11th-place-worldwide-for-digital-quality-of-life
>
> Cheers,
> Stephen
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
>

--
Roger Clarke                            mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
T: +61 2 6288 6916   http://www.xamax.com.au  http://www.rogerclarke.com

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University
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