Bangalore: Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. Since then it has grown explosively and has had a profound impact on humanity. This impact is evolving continuously with the creation of new content, connectivity software and infrastructure. Some countries have moved faster and more effectively than others to harness the Web as an accelerator of development.

To understand this gap, Sir Tim Berners-Lee developed an Index that combines existing secondary data with new primary data to rank countries according to their progress and use of the Web. It measures and ranks three broad states including: web readiness, web use and web impact, including social-media interactions and business use.

Let’s have a look on the top 10 ranked countries in the first edition of the Index, which surveyed 61 countries.

10. Ireland

The tenth rank is held by Ireland, ranking sixth for overall impact, tenth for the Web and eleventh for Readiness. Ireland is ahead of all countries in the Web Index in terms of the

web’s effects on the nation’s economy. There is considerable room for improvement in other areas. The Political Impact of the Web (21) in Ireland is substantially lower than any of the countries in top 10, ranking below nations including Chile, Colombia and Egypt. Ireland’ e-participation index score in 2011 was a lowly 0.132. It measures the extent to which governments use the Web to provide information and interact with stakeholders and engage citizens in decision-making.