Ukraine ranks 85th out of 152 countries in the 2021 ranking of the most forward-thinking countries by U.S. magazine Ceoworld. The journalists assessed the countries by how good their citizens are at anticipating and implementing changes.
The United Kingdom ranked first, followed by Japan, Germany, Singapore and South Korea. The United States ranked sixth and Australia — seventh.
For each country in the ranking, the magazine analyzed things like online state services, cashless payments, mobile accessibility, tech expertise, the spread of the internet, the level of bureaucracy and how apt a country’s citizens are at using digital tools.
Overall, there were 36 indicators that affected the ranking, each was scored from 1 to 100.
The winner, the United Kingdom, has a score of 72, while Ukraine got 46. Somalia bottomed out the ranking with a score of 32.
The survey was conducted on Jan. 2–30, 2021. For it, the Ceoworld magazine partnered with the Global Business Policy Institute and surveyed 120,000 people.
In 2020, Ukraine made important steps to digitize its government services. The Digital Transformation Ministry introduced website and mobile application Diia aimed at providing Ukrainians with a range of government services online.
The app also stores digital versions of Ukrainian citizens’ IDs like foreign and domestic passports and driver’s licenses.
The National Bank of Ukraine has introduced a system of electronic payments to process hryvnia settlements between banks and clients within Ukraine. Today, the system is used for 96% of the interbank payments in Ukraine.
In 2019, the Ukrainian government approved a list of scientific developments that Ukraine would pursue in 2020-2021 and announced that the country would spend over $1 million on funding scientists to work on them.
According to the 2020 Global Innovation Index by Cornell University, Ukraine is the second most innovative country among the countries with below-average income.
