Developing countries seeking to overcome gaps in information and communication technology (ICT) that make it difficult for domestic businesses to compete with fully "wired" firms overseas need reliable statistics on ICT use -- and a team of international agencies has agreed to expand its efforts to help.
Using ICTs to boost economic growth requires good decision-making based on reliable data. However, research by the UNCTAD ICT and e-business team has shown that in 2006, while 116 developing countries had already introduced national ICT master plans, only 28 had official data on ICT use in enterprises. Without such data, it is difficult for policy makers to assess the impact of their ICT plans and programmes.
To close the data gap, ten international organizations, which have worked together under the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development, signed in July a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to increase their joint efforts to help developing countries compile reliable, comparable ICT statistics. Current partners are the International Telecommunication Union (ITU); the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); UNCTAD; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization´s (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics; the United Nations Regional Commissions for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC), Western Asia (UNESCWA), Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), and Africa (UNECA); the World Bank; and EUROSTAT.
Based on the agreement, members of the Partnership will actively contribute to producing more and better ICT statistical information to allow governments and other stakeholders to make informed policy decisions for using ICTs as a tool for social and economic development.
The goals of the Partnership are to define and analyze internationally comparable statistical indicators on ICT; to establish effective methods for collecting such indicators in developing countries; to assist such countries in building their statistical capacities; and to set up a global database on essential ICT statistics.
The Partnership was launched in 2004 during the UNCTAD XI quadrennial conference in Sao Paolo, Brazil. To date the group has set up a core list of ICT indicators based on internationally agreed standards; staged technical workshops in various regions to help developing countries improve their collection of ICT statistics; and worked directly with statistical agencies in developing countries on the collection and analysis of such data. The Partnership also played an active role in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
