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DCO Launches Digital Economy Navigator to Bridge Digital Economy Gap Worldwide

DCO Secretary-General Deemah AlYahya - SPA
DCO Secretary-General Deemah AlYahya - SPA
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DCO Launches Digital Economy Navigator to Bridge Digital Economy Gap Worldwide

DCO Secretary-General Deemah AlYahya - SPA
DCO Secretary-General Deemah AlYahya - SPA

The Digital Cooperation Organization (DCO) has launched its inaugural Digital Economy Navigator (DEN) that enables countries to better navigate the paths to digital economy maturity, find opportunities for growth, benchmark progress, and bridge the gap in digital economy maturity, SPA reported.
DEN was unveiled at SDG Digital, held this year during the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York from September 10 to 27.
Drawing upon officially disseminated statistics, secondary data, and unique proprietary data from a large DCO survey, DEN is a unifying framework that addresses digital economy maturity across 50 countries, including the DCO member states. The framework provides a platform for nations, stakeholders, and decision makers to harmonize efforts to advance the global digital economy, enable accessibility, sustainability, and shared prosperity across borders.
The navigator evaluates the extent to which factors contribute to economic prosperity, sustainability, and improved quality of life. This provides a common understanding for different stakeholder groups to work together in developing digital economy strategies to bridge gaps and allows for progress to be tracked over time.
DCO Secretary-General Deemah AlYahya said: “The Digital Economy Navigator aims to enhance accessibility, sustainability, and economic prosperity, ensuring that countries are not just keeping pace but leading in the digital era. As the first global framework to comprehensively address digital economy maturity from a user-centric perspective, DEN plays a pivotal role in advancing the DCO’s mission of supporting evidence-based policies and impactful outcomes in the digital economy. By providing reliable and detailed data, insights into current trends and emerging technologies, and strategic foresight into future challenges, DEN equips countries to achieve higher levels of prosperity, inclusion, and sustainability. We, at DCO, are committed to empowering stakeholders with the knowledge they need to navigate and thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.”
DEN is relevant for policymakers, business executives, and experts in digital economy. Decision makers are equipped with the research, data, and analysis necessary to cultivate a more inclusive digital economy and society, encourage digital innovation, create jobs, accelerate GDP growth, amplify sustainability through digital technologies, and enhance overall wellbeing.
Uniquely among global tools, DEN assesses the digital economy through the lens of three intersecting dimensions: Digital Enablers, Digital Business, and Digital Society. Within the three dimensions, 10 pillars synthesize and summarize key aspects of countries’ digital economy and use of digital technology application from 102 indicators gathered from secondary data sources, as well as primary data from a novel survey of more than 27,000 people across the 50 countries.
DEN introduces a comprehensive maturity classification system with five categories based on pillars’ scores from 0 to 100 that can be used by stakeholders to better target and focus initiatives to drive digital advancement and innovation in their quest for sustainable and inclusive growth of their digital economy.
DEN reveals a diverse picture of maturity across regions. North America, for example, leads in digital innovation, followed by Europe and Central Asia, and East Asia and Pacific. South Asia leads in digital work and training, followed by the Middle East and North Africa region. The Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean regions are advanced in the digital education and health services. This pillar particularly, “Digital for education and health”, demonstrate substantial global maturity, with moderate variability in scores indicating a trend toward global convergence.

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US Economy Grew at Solid 3% Rate Last Quarter, Government Says in Final Estimate

FILE - The New York Stock Exchange, at rear, is shown on Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
FILE - The New York Stock Exchange, at rear, is shown on Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
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US Economy Grew at Solid 3% Rate Last Quarter, Government Says in Final Estimate

FILE - The New York Stock Exchange, at rear, is shown on Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
FILE - The New York Stock Exchange, at rear, is shown on Sept. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

The American economy expanded at a healthy 3% annual pace from April through June, boosted by strong consumer spending and business investment, the government said Thursday, leaving its previous estimate unchanged.
The Commerce Department reported that the nation's gross domestic product — the nation's total output of goods and services — picked up sharply in the second quarter from the tepid 1.6% annual rate in the first three months of the year, The Associated Press reported.
Consumer spending, the primary driver of the economy, grew last quarter at a 2.8% pace, down slightly from the 2.9% rate the government had previously estimated. Business investment was also solid: It increased at a vigorous 8.3% annual pace last quarter, led by a 9.8% rise in investment in equipment.
The final GDP estimate for the April-June quarter included figures showing that inflation continues to ease, to just above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. The central bank’s favored inflation gauge — the personal consumption expenditures index, or PCE — rose at a 2.5% annual rate last quarter, down from 3% in the first quarter of the year. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core PCE inflation grew at a 2.8% pace, down from 3.7% from January through March.
The US economy, the world's biggest, displayed remarkable resilience in the face of the 11 interest rate hikes the Fed carried out in 2022 and 2023 to fight the worst bout of inflation in four decades. Since peaking at 9.1% in mid-2022, annual inflation as measured by the consumer price index has tumbled to 2.5%.
Despite the surge in borrowing rates, the economy kept growing and employers kept hiring. Still, the job market has shown signs of weakness in recent months. From June through August, America's employers added an average of just 116,000 jobs a month, the lowest three-month average since mid-2020, when the COVID pandemic had paralyzed the economy. The unemployment rate has ticked up from a half-century low 3.4% last year to 4.2%, still relatively low.
Last week, responding to the steady drop in inflation and growing evidence of a more sluggish job market, the Fed cut its benchmark interest rate by an unusually large half-point. The rate cut, the Fed’s first in more than four years, reflected its new focus on shoring up the job market now that inflation has largely been tamed.
Some other barometers of the economy still look healthy. Americans last month increased their spending at retailers, for example, suggesting that consumers are still able and willing to spend more despite the cumulative impact of three years of excess inflation and high borrowing rates. The nation’s industrial production rebounded. The pace of single-family-home construction rose sharply from the pace a year earlier.
And this month, consumer sentiment rose for a third straight month, according to preliminary figures from the University of Michigan. The brighter outlook was driven by “more favorable prices as perceived by consumers” for cars, appliances, furniture and other long-lasting goods.
A category within GDP that measures the economy’s underlying strength rose at a healthy 2.7% annual rate, though that was down from 2.9% in the first quarter. This category includes consumer spending and private investment but excludes volatile items like exports, inventories and government spending.
Though the Fed now believes inflation is largely defeated, many Americans remain upset with still-high prices for groceries, gas, rent and other necessities. Former President Donald Trump blames the Biden-Harris administration for sparking an inflationary surge. Vice President Kamala Harris, in turn, has charged that Trump’s promise to slap tariffs on all imports would raise prices for consumers even further.
On Thursday, the Commerce Department also issued revisions to previous GDP estimates. From 2018 through 2023, growth was mostly higher — an average annual rate of 2.3%, up from a previously reported 2.1% — largely because of upward revisions to consumer spending. The revisions showed that GDP grew 2.9% last year, up from the 2.5% previously reported.
Thursday’s report was the government’s third and final estimate of GDP growth for the April-June quarter. It will release its initial estimate of July-September GDP growth on Oct. 30.