The UN Statistical Commission, the highest decision-making body of the global statistical system, endorsed the core list of ICT indicators developed by the UNCTAD XI Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development, at its last session in March 2007.
UNCTAD presented a report on ICT statistics on behalf of the Partnership during the Commission's recently concluded session in New York in February-March 2007. The report provided information on the significant progress made by the Partnership in improving the availability of internationally comparable statistics on ICT and in defining a core list of ICT indicators.
Chief statisticians from around the world congratulated the Partnership, led by UNCTAD, for its work and for being an example of successful cooperation between international organizations.
The endorsement of the core list of ICT indicators by the UN Statistical Commission also reflects effective collaboration between UNCTAD's Central Statistics Branch and ICT and E-Business Branch. The latter is the focal point for the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development within UNCTAD.
The Commission urged countries to use the core list of ICT indicators in their data collection programmes and encouraged the Partnership to assist countries in their capacity-building efforts for the collection of ICT data. Several developing countries have already integrated the core list into existing household and business surveys (for example, 9 out of 19 Latin American nations). But national statistical offices need further technical assistance on ICT statistics so that they are better able to collect and process official data and indicators on their information societies, and the Partnership has already started to help them.
The Commission acknowledged that ICT is a rapidly evolving area and encouraged the Partnership to continue its efforts to improve and update the list of indicators, especially in view of measuring the use of ICT in education, in Government, the contribution of ICT to economic growth and social development, and barriers to the use of ICT. The core list of ICT indicators should become a basic reference for the formulation and evaluation of policies on ICT for development.
