Despite repeated Government commitments to place Britain at the vanguard of the "global information technology revolution", the country remains outside the top ten nations in terms of exploiting the latest developments and in building for the future.

According to the World Economic Forum, despite Britain having improved its global ranking from 15th to 12th, it still lags countries such as Canada, Australia and the United States in areas such as broadband access and science education.

This week, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, previewed his Budget when he committed the Government to making all "necessary changes" to create a hi-tech Britain.

There was a need to bridge the "digital divide" he said, calling on Britain to meet "the new Asian and new technology challenge," a task that would require businesses to "adapt and change more quickly than ever before".

To do so, the Chancellor might look to Singapore, which was named as the most successful economy in exploiting IT developments, overtaking the United States.

"Singapore is an excellent example of a country that has been able to make in a relatively short period of time enormous progress in putting IT at the service of improved living standards," Augusto Lopez-Claros, the director of the global competitiveness programme at the World Economic Forum, said.

"Together with a handful of other economies - Taiwan, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Korea, Estonia, among others - Singapore’s experience highlights the increasingly central role played by technology as an engine of growth and competitiveness."

Other Asian nations were also praised as doing "extremely well" by the report’s authors.

Hong Kong, which overtook the UK, and Japan entered the top ten for the first time, at seven and eight respectively. Australia, Taiwan, New Zealand, Korea and Malaysia were "quite well positioned" at 11, 15, 21, 24 and 27 respectively.

The emerging economies of India and China were singled out as "significantly improving their positions", climbing to number 39 and 41, compared to 45 and 51 in 2003 repectively.

At the height of the dot.com boom, Tony Blair, the prime minister, had pledged that Britain would lead the world in terms of access to high-speed internet connections by 2005. But last month, a study on broadband, commissioned by the Department of Trade and Industry, found that in terms of choice and price, the UK trailed Japan and Canada.

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