The Bank has compiled a mountain of new data: nearly 1,200 indicators in total. These should help to underpin its genuine efforts to improve governance and guide policymakers, which is part of its mission.
But from a marketing and brand awareness perspective, a lot has been lost. Most obviously, there indian mobile number list is no longer a ranking. Countries will no longer advertise or promote their position, or see their relative gains — or losses — from year to year. Instead, Business Ready assesses countries in three broad areas: regulatory framework, public services and operational efficiency. This reduces some of the pressure on governments to show that they’re moving in the right direction, but it also removes the original point of the study: to rank countries. To see how the UK does compared with Germany, or Australia compared with New Zealand. To give a niche example for data fans, it’s as if Wisden Cricketers Almanack started giving detailed assessments of the batting or bowling styles of leading players, but no longer picked the five best cricketers of the year.
Another loss (especially for those data fans) is that the interactive data tool is a lot less engaging–and less specific. The previous Doing Business approach allowed you to quickly tell that in Botswana, for example, it took 48 days to set up a new business — compared with just 0.5 days for the then global leader, New Zealand. In the new tool, the indicator is now given as a relative score, which means that Botswana scores 21.75 out of a maximum of 25 (you’ll need to drill down to that indicator, as you can’t link to a specific indicator score). It’s not immediately clear whether this score is good or bad, and it’s hard to tell how to drill down into the indicator to find the new total for the number of days. The charts for this data are attractive but not very informative. Overall, in seeking to re-establish its credibility, some of the genuinely interesting detail has been lost.
World Bank’s Business Ready Index (Starting a business, Botswana data)
My criticisms are those of a thought leadership specialist who helps companies stand out from the crowd, and because indexes can be powerful ways to build a brand, create awareness and generate coverage. And ultimately that fosters engagement. With Business Ready, however, the World Bank’s goal isn’t to create a famous index or to (re)build a prominent brand, but to correct the faults of its previous approach. This is clearly the more important objective to achieve. But my prediction is that while it will provide more data that is less open for manipulation, it will also unfortunately attract less coverage – and in turn less (real) reforming zeal from governments.