Measuring ICTs: indicators to promote evidence-based policymaking
ITU News - 17/02/2016 - [gif]
Autor: Alexandre Barbosa
Assunto: Pesquisas Cetic.br
The rapid dissemination of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in all segments of society has created many opportunities to engage citizens in an increasingly digitally connected world. At the same time, the fast adoption of ICTs by citizens, organizations and governments poses new challenges for policymakers aiming to foster the ICT skills development required for success in today’s digital economy while also ensuring digital inclusion across the population.
Measuring the impacts of ICTs in society as well as monitoring how they are being used to promote sustainable development is essential to the design of effective public policies. The production of reliable statistical data to monitor the progress made by countries in promoting digital inclusion — and to measure the adoption of ICTs — is a crucial activity to guide policymakers’ ICT growth strategies.
Policymakers need high‑quality data to underpin evidence‑based policy decisions. Studies show that better use of better statistics leads to better policies — and improved accountability. In turn, good statistics are critical to measure the impact of evidence‑based policies put in place.
ITU’s leading role
Many countries and organizations — including National Statistical Offices, private companies and non‑governmental organizations — have been increasing their capacity to produce specific ICT‑related statistics to help policymakers craft better policies. However, some regions and countries still lack the ability to provide systematic and reliable ICT statistics.
Most countries have been collecting and producing supply‑side administrative data through ministries or regulators, which is very often insufficient for policy purposes. This is why the need for the production of harmonized, internationally comparable demand‑side ICT statistics is being discussed at national and international levels.
The ITU‑led Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development (the Partnership) is an international multistakeholder alliance created in 2004 to address the challenges of ICT data collection and analysis. The Partnership plays a very important role in providing a harmonized methodological framework to measure 53 ICT core indicators, thereby reinforcing the international comparability of ICT data across countries.
In this regard, ITU is leading an important process to develop statistical standards and internationally agreed methodologies to enable countries to measure the access to and use of ICTs. The ITU Manual for Measuring ICT Access and Use by Households and Individuals, for example, is a practical tool to guide countries in their ICT data production. It can be used as basic reference material when preparing, designing and implementing ICT household surveys.
Another important role of ITU is the coordination process at the international level of data collection, compilation and dissemination. Moreover, ITU has been offering capacity‑building and technical support to Member States in the process of collecting and compiling ICT‑related statistics.
Lessons learned in Brazil
Brazil officially started to produce internationally comparable ICT statis tics in 2004, as a result of a partnership between the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which made possible the inclusion of an ICT module in the National Households Sample Survey (PNAD), giving rise to the first generation of ICT statistics in the country.
After this successful experience, the need to deepen the investigation of the impacts of ICTs in specific areas, such as e‑government, e‑commerce, barriers to access and use, skills, and safety, has led both the Internet Steering Committee and the Network Information Center (NIC.br) to allocate resources for annual stand‑alone ICT surveys. This important initiative made it possible to establish Brazil’s first two national surveys dedicated exclusively to ICTs in households and ICTs in enterprises.
These surveys, conducted annually by the Regional Center for Studies on the Development of the Information Society (Cetic.br), have become the major and primary source of statistical data on ICTs in Brazil. They are important instruments for designing and assessing ICT policies.
In the context of the development of ICT indicators, the solid cooperation between ITU and Cetic.br over the years has been central to the exchange of relevant information, best practices and sharing experiences. For instance, the ICT Households survey follows definitions and standards established by international organizations and is aligned with the guidelines set forth in the Manual for Measuring ICT Access and Use by Households and Individuals, published by ITU in 2014.
Cetic.br’s experience shows that internationally agreed methodologies are of utmost importance, but not sufficient to promote evidence‑based policymaking. Other initiatives are necessary to engage policymakers and other relevant stakeholders in the ICT statistics production process. Capacity‑building workshops on how to use survey data in the policymaking process have proven effective in Brazil. Aside from raising awareness on the importance of measurement in the design and monitoring of ICT policies, the workshops are also an important channel for disseminating internationally acknowledged frameworks and methodologies, such as those set forth by the Partnership.
