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Guide 2009 Revised Complete <add OECD logo> GUIDE TO MEASURING THE INFORMATION SOCIETY, 2009 1 FOREWORD The Working Party on Indicators for the Information Society (WPIIS) first discussed the Guide for Measuring the Information Society at its April 2005 meeting. A number of WPIIS delegates and others provided comments, both before and after the meeting. The Guide was first published at the end of 2005. It was prepared by Sheridan Roberts of the OECD with substantial input from a number of other contributors. This revision was also prepared by Sheridan Roberts (as a consultant to the OECD), again with the assistance of other contributors (see Acknowledgements for details). A draft was presented to the 2007 WPIIS meeting and delegates were invited to provide comments. Further changes were made during 2008 and 2009, mainly reflecting finalisation of the information economy product classifications (affecting Chapters 2 and 7, and Annex 1a). The Guide is published under the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. © Copyright OECD/OCDE, 2009 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD...................................................................................................................................................2 PREFACE .......................................................................................................................................................9 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................11 The information society, in statistical terms ..............................................................................................11 The Guide and its rationale........................................................................................................................13 The information society .........................................................................................................................13 The economic dimension .......................................................................................................................14 The social dimension..............................................................................................................................14 Rationale.................................................................................................................................................14 Expected benefits ...................................................................................................................................15 Users of the Guide .....................................................................................................................................15 Scope and content of the Guide .................................................................................................................15 CHAPTER 2: ICT PRODUCTS ...................................................................................................................18 Introduction................................................................................................................................................18 The ICT product classification...................................................................................................................19 International trade in ICT products............................................................................................................20 The price and quality of ICT products.......................................................................................................20 Hedonic indexes and quality adjustments in price indexes for IT products...........................................21 CHAPTER 3: ICT INFRASTRUCTURE .....................................................................................................25 Introduction................................................................................................................................................25 Public switched telecommunication networks (PSTN)..............................................................................26 The Internet................................................................................................................................................26 A note on infrastructure technologies ....................................................................................................26 Broadband measurement........................................................................................................................27 Internet network statistics.......................................................................................................................28 Internet traffic exchange measures.........................................................................................................29 Quality of services .....................................................................................................................................29 Infrastructure investment ...........................................................................................................................30 Tariffs.........................................................................................................................................................30 CHAPTER 4: ICT SUPPLY .........................................................................................................................31 Introduction................................................................................................................................................31 The ICT sector definition...........................................................................................................................31 Production of ICT goods and services outside the ICT sector...................................................................33 The impacts of an ICT sector.....................................................................................................................33 Empirical work.......................................................................................................................................33 Measurement issues................................................................................................................................33 Future developments ..............................................................................................................................34 ICT patenting activity ................................................................................................................................34 Introduction............................................................................................................................................34 3 Statistical and policy use of patent indicators ........................................................................................34 Strengths and limitations of using patent documents for statistical analysis .........................................35 Designing indicators to measure innovative activity: selection of appropriate criteria..........................36 Patent indicators by industry..................................................................................................................36 Definition of ICT-related patents ...........................................................................................................37 Future developments ..............................................................................................................................38 CHAPTER 5: ICT DEMAND BY BUSINESSES........................................................................................40 Introduction................................................................................................................................................40 OECD model survey of ICT use by businesses .........................................................................................40 E-commerce...............................................................................................................................................41 Technological convergence....................................................................................................................42 Commitment and timing issues ..............................................................................................................43 Conventional e-mail transactions ...........................................................................................................43 Selling by agents ....................................................................................................................................43 The finance sector ..................................................................................................................................44 Reliability of splits of the value of Internet commerce transactions ......................................................44 Online purchases data.............................................................................................................................44 Data collection issues.............................................................................................................................44 E-business ..................................................................................................................................................45 History of WPIIS work on measuring e-business ..................................................................................45
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