To what extent is a government of a certain country prepared to implement AI in public services? That is the basic question of the Government AI Readiness index of consultancy firm Oxford Insights. To compose the ranking, Oxford Insights measures 10 criteria, divided into three pillars.

• Government: vision, governance and ethics, digital capacity and adaptibility
• Technology sector: size, innovative capacity and human capital
• Data & infrastructure: availability and representativeness of data and infrastructure

General findings

Oxford Insights finds that countries are increasingly working on national AI strategies. Of the 160 countries assessed, 30% already have a national AI strategy. A further 9% are currently working on a strategy. Our country belongs to the second group.

On a global level, the US stands out. According to the report, the US scores highest of all nations in several indicators, including investments in software and emerging technologies. The US can also rely on the presence of many large tech companies, as it still has the largest concentration of potential AI suppliers of any country.

It is notable that East Asian countries perform strongly on average. Singapore, South Korea, China, Japan and Taiwan occupy 5 places in the top 20 this year. The best-scoring countries in the region are driven by a highly-skilled workforce and advanced technological infrastructures, which boost the region's research capacity.

In the European Union, Finland (4th place) is the best student. The country, like other Nordic countries, outperforms their economic size (in terms of GDP) mainly due to effective public policies and an innovative business environment. Read more about Aurora AI, Finland's national AI programme. Oxford Insights also made an overview analysis of AI in Nordic countries last year. Read the conclusions of the study here. The Netherlands (5th place) also scores very well. Take a look at the Quickscan AI of research institute TNO, which carried out the study last year for the Dutch government.

The report also focuses on the United Kingdom. See the various government initiatives from the UK that the Policy Monitor has already summarised.

The overall picture of the ranking also reveals a gap between different regions in the world. The difference between countries in the northern and southern hemispheres in terms of 'Government AI readiness' is very large. Oxford Insights indicates that the importance of international cooperation and exchange should therefore not be underestimated. It is pleased that elements such as research and development, digital infrastructure and innovation are receiving increasing attention in international development initiatives such as the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Belgium

On a global scale, our country (28th place) is not performing poorly. In Western Europe, however, our country is at the bottom of the ranking.

First, the good news: Belgium scores well on Data and Infrastructure (22nd place). This means that our country has good infrastructure to support AI technology, that there is enough data available to train AI models and that the available data is sufficiently representative for the entire population. Also in terms of the Technology sector (21st place), our country scores more than adequately. There is a good supply of AI applications from the technology sector in our country, which is also sufficiently dynamic. The sector also has a solid innovation capacity, a decent business climate and a good supply of R&D expenditure. The skills of the workforce in the sector are good, but our country could still do better in terms of (additional) training.

Belgium does not score well on the Government section (53rd place). There are several factors that can explain this low score. First, our country is hampered by the fact that there is still no national AI strategy. Also, the number of ethical initiatives to implement AI is rather limited. The use of ICT by the government does not yet sufficiently improve the quality of government operations and finally, the report also judges that the ability of the government to respond to new social developments is too low.

Countries to watch

Chile receives good feedback from the jury on strategy. The government has unveiled a national AI policy plan for the next 10 years with a strong focus on education and skills. The action plan includes increasing government-funded scholarships for AI-related programmes at foreign universities. There is also a strong focus on collaboration between academic institutions and the private sector.

Singapore (2nd place) is the primus of the small countries in this ranking. The country has a very detailed strategy to become a 'smart' country. The government wants to fully digitise its services and tailor them to the needs of citizens and businesses. Singapore's strategy is based on a good relationship between the government and the private sector. One example is CODEX, a joint digital platform between government agencies and the private sector to develop efficient and cost-effective applications. Singapore is also extremely ambitious when it comes to skills. The country has set up a centre of excellence to, among other things, improve the skills of civil servants and executives, and in the next five years it wants to train 20,000 civil servants in data science.