The Czech Republic fell four places and ranked 36 th out of 133 countries in terms of networked readiness index, according to the Global Information Technology Report of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The score of the country was 4.35 falling from 4.53 in the previous release. The Czech Republic performed better than Lithuania (41st), Hungary (46th), Italy (48th), Latvia (52nd), the Slovak Republic (55th), Greece (56th), Romania (59th), Poland (65th) and Bulgaria (71st) from the other 26 EU member countries. The index aims at assessing the different degrees to which countries leverage ICT in daily activities in order to effectively boost growth and prosperity in daily activities. It has three dimensions: business, regulatory and infrastructure environment for ICT; readiness of persons, companies and governments to use ICT and real usage of ICT. The main strengths of the country are seen in the competition intensity, the number of procedures to enforce a contract, electricity production, scientists and engineers availability, quality of scientific research institutes, accessibility to digital content, educational system quality, particularly math and science education, almost all business readiness indicators, mobile phones penetration, Internet access in schools, capacity for innovation, high-tech and creative industries exports and business internet use. It lags significantly behind in terms of burden of government regulation (114th) and telephone subscription rates and fees (115th for business and 126th for residential monthly fees, 98th in fixed telephone line tariffs). Some other weaknesses are the tax burden, the effectiveness of law-making bodies, the time to enforce a contract, and the government success in ICT promotion.
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Social Democrats (CDDS), the major Czech opposition party, proposed next year's general and European elections to be held on the same day, CTK news agency reported. CSSD leader Bohuslav Sobotka ... more
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The upper house of the Czech parliament, the Senate, voted on March 20 a constitutional amendment to limit the immunity of lawmakers and constitutional judges, Radio Prague reported. Out of the ... more