UNCTAD has held a session on measuring the information economy, at a regional International Telecommunication Union (ITU) workshop for the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
The three-day workshop, which took place from 24 to 26 April, was hosted by Azerbaijan's Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies, and was organized by ITU in cooperation with UNCTAD. The session was held in Nakhichevan, Azerbaijan.
The objective of this regional workshop for CIS countries was to strengthen their capacity to produce national statistics and indicators on information and communication technologies (ICTs).
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The 40 participants represented ICT ministries, telecommunications regulatory agencies and national statistical offices from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Republic of Moldova, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Although ICT has recently been identified as a sector with significant development potential for the region, the workshop acknowledged that official statistics on the information economy were available for only 20 to 50 per cent of CIS countries, depending on the indicator. Although several countries have started to conduct business surveys, or are considering initiating them, the coverage and comparability of ICT indicators remains low in the region.
During the workshop, the ICT Analysis Section of UNCTAD's Division on Technology and Logistics organized a session dedicated to measuring ICT use in business, and measuring the ICT sector, which includes industries such as telecommunications, software publishing, and the manufacture of computers and communication equipment. Since 2004, as part of its activities as a member of the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development, UNCTAD has been working with national statistical offices on harmonizing and collecting official statistical indicators on the information economy.
At the end of the workshop, the participants agreed on the need to organize regional training for statisticians on information economy statistics, with a view to building a regional network of experts in this area. UNCTAD plans to organize such a workshop in early 2014.
The UNCTAD work programme on Measuring the Information Economy is funded by the government of Sweden.
