Strengthening the Measurement of ICT for Sustainable Development: 20 Years of Progress and New Frontiers

Celebrating 20 years of the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development: Reflecting on progress and charting the future

The Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development marked its 20th anniversary with a session moderated by Susan Teltscher, who has been closely associated with the partnership since its launch at the UNCTAD 11 conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The partnership’s objectives have remained consistent over the years, focusing on harmonising ICT indicators, enhancing the capacity of statistical offices in developing nations, and creating a global ICT database accessible to all.

The session featured a diverse panel of experts from ITU, UNDESA, UNCTAD, ILO, UNITAR, CETIC, and URSEC, who discussed the progress and challenges in the field of ICT measurement. Esperanza Magpantay from ITU highlighted the significant growth in the number of countries collecting ICT household data and detailed ongoing activities such as updating handbooks and exploring new data sources like mobile phone big data.

Deniz Susar from UNDESA provided insights into the evolution of the e-government survey, which now includes new indicators and methodologies to better assess e-government development across UN member states. Thomas van Giffen from UNCTAD discussed the shift in focus from measuring ICT use by businesses to broader aspects of the digital economy, such as e-commerce and digitally deliverable services, noting the challenges in data collection and the need for methodological development.

Michael Frosch from the ILO shared initiatives on ICT and labour statistics, particularly concerning the informal economy and digital platform employment. He emphasised the need for better data to understand the impact of technologies on work and highlighted the gender divide in access to mobile internet, with more males than females having access.

Dr. Kees Balde from UNITAR presented the work on e-waste statistics, including the development of guidelines and methodologies that have been adopted internationally. He noted ongoing updates to reflect changes in e-waste management and composition.

Alexandre Barbosa from CETIC provided a historical perspective on Brazil’s role in ICT measurement and discussed the country’s pioneering work in health ICT indicators, offering support for future partnership initiatives. Dr. Mercedes Aramendia from URSEC shared how Uruguay’s regulator utilises ICT indicators to design and evaluate public policies, highlighting the importance of data for various regulatory functions and the potential use of mobile data for emergency decision-making.

The session underscored the partnership’s successes over the past 20 years and the ongoing need for collaboration and innovation in the measurement of ICT to inform policy decisions and promote sustainable development. The panellists expressed a commitment to continuing this work and adapting to new challenges in the dynamic ICT sector. A workshop in Brazil is planned for August to further celebrate the partnership’s milestone.

In conclusion, the session served as a testament to the partnership’s impact on shaping the global agenda for the measurement of ICT and its pivotal role in supporting evidence-based policymaking for sustainable development. The panellists’ presentations and discussions reflected a shared understanding of the importance of accurate and relevant data in navigating the complexities of the digital age.

Susan Teltscher:
this partnership session. My name is Susan Telcher. I’m head of the Capacity and Digital Skills Development Division at the ITU and I will be moderating your session this morning. And I would like to start by saying how thrilled I am to be part of this session. The session has been organized by the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development. And this partnership is celebrating 20 years. It’s 20 year anniversary this year. And it’s also very close to my heart. Because indeed, the partnership was launched in in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at the UNCTAD 11 conference in June 2004. And at that time, I was working at UNCTAD. And I was also driving the partnership creation from the UNCTAD site at this point. So I have known it from its very inception, and I’m very happy to be part of the session today. So when the partnership was created, originally, it had three objectives. First, to achieve a common set of indicators on ICT readiness and usage, collected by all countries and harmonized internationally. Second, to enhance the capacities of national statistical offices in developing countries, and build competence in developing statistical programs. And third, to develop a global database on ICT indicators and make it available publicly. So amazingly, 20 years later, these objectives have been pursued and are still very relevant today to the work on ICT measurement. Now the launch of the partnership was directly linked to the outcome of the WSIA. Geneva Plan of Action. For those of you who were around at that time, the Plan of Action had called for the development of indicators to monitor progress in ICT for development and to build capacities in this regard. And in fact, the partnership was created between the two WSIS summits, just six months after the 2003 Geneva summit and before the 2005 summit. So at that time, the partners, when it was launched, the partners included UNCTAD, ITU, OECD, UNDESA, UNESCO, the World Bank, the ICT Task Force and several of the UN regional commissions and other partners joined later on. So I’m so thrilled about the evolution of the partnership and that we are now celebrating its 20th anniversary and I wanted to congratulate all the members of the partnership to this success. Several of them are here on the panel today and in fact, the session today is celebrating this anniversary and more specifically, it will look at some of the achievements that were made during that time and it will also look at what is ahead. So since the ICT sector is very dynamic, as we all know, and it is expanding across all the sectors, the indicators related to ICT and digital technologies also need to be constantly reviewed and new indicators need to be developed. So we have a distinguished panel. Some are here, some are waiting for the slots to be open on the podium, but I would like to just briefly introduce them. We have from ITU Esperanza Magpantai, I think you all know her, you probably know anyway most of the people, but let me introduce them. We have from UNDESA, Deniz Susar, over there. We have from UNCTAD, Thomas von Griffen. ILO is with us, or? Ah, okay, very good, Michael Frosch from ILO. Then we have a remote participant from UNITAR, Kees Balde. I don’t know if he’s already remote, but we will hear from him later. Then we have from Brazil, from CETIC, we have Alexandre Barbosa with us. Very happy to see you. And we have from Uruguay, from URSEC, Mercedes Aramendia. Yes, very nice to see you. Welcome. So I’m not going into the details of each speaker. You can find those on the website in, because we don’t have that much time to go through all of this. And before we now move to our panelists, I would like to actually introduce Bruno Ramos. Looking over there. He’s the Acting Deputy Director to the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau. And we are very honored that Bruno, who is from Brazil also, so the Brazilian connection with the partnership we deliberately chose. So we have this link here. He will make us present some welcome remarks. Over to you, Bruno.

Bruno Ramos:
Thank you. Thank you, Susan. Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome. It’s before I enter here in my remarks. It’s very good to be here because for me, it’s very good to be here, because for me, it’s very good to be here because for me, it’s very good to be here, because for me, As a delegate, I had probably a hundred meetings in this room 15 years ago, and it’s very nice to come back to this room, to the ITU-T. So it’s very nice. And to see so many friends here, it’s a real pleasure to be here with you. So, dear participants, speakers, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the BDT director, Dr. Cosmas Alvazava, I’d like to welcome you all to our WSIS Plus 20 high-level event on strengthening the measurement of ICT for sustainable development, 20 years of progress and new frontiers. This event marks the start of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the partnership on measuring ICT for development. And I congratulate very much the partnership and its members. The years of collaboration and dedication resulted to improvements in data ability since the inception of the partnership coming from the first WSIS in 2003. Nevertheless, much work remains related to the objectives of improving data ability, and there are new areas also to access that require indicators and data to measure. Data alone is not enough. Data must be used to inform policy decisions, guide investments and drive innovation. We need to work together to ensure that the data we collect is used effectively to promote sustainable development and improve people’s lives. ITU is committed to the work of the partnership and we fully support the steering committee. I wish you all a very nice and good session and thank you all participants and speakers in the room and those joining online. Thank you very much, Susan.

Susan Teltscher:
Thank you very much, Bruno, for your inspiring and thought-provoking introductory and welcome remarks and thank you for joining us here. Thank you. And we are now going to move to the panelists. So I would like to kindly ask everybody to keep your interventions brief, four to five minutes each, so that we can give everybody a chance to speak and don’t have to rush towards the end. So our first panelist will be Esperanza and I would like to ask Esperanza to share with us some of the preliminary results of a stocktaking exercise that was done on the core ICT indicators, thank you, Bruno, that were developed by the partnership. And if you could also please provide us with a brief overview of the indicators related to household ICT access and individual use of ICTs and what are some of the future challenges related to that. Over to you, SP.

Esperanza Magpantay:
Thank you very much, Susan. Good morning, everyone. So as Susan mentioned, the ITU covers the ICT household indicators in the partnership as well as infrastructure indicators, which are the traditional indicators that are collected by the ITU. So most of the points here in this slide was already mentioned by Susan, but I just want to underline that the ITU together with UNCTAD and UNDESA formed the steering committee of the partnership, which rotates every two years. So the ITU has been very active. in the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development for the past 20 years, particularly leading its work and being in the steering committee. Next slide, please. So, this slide here, I wanted to capture the timeline of the partnership and the different important deliverables and events that happened within the 20 years of existence. So, as Susan mentioned, we started in WSIS 2003 where the partnership was launched immediately after that. And in 2005, in Tunis, we launched the first core ICT indicators, and at the same time, we look at the global stocktaking of availability of the data for all those core indicators. And so, the different manuals, particularly the ones from the ITU was launched between 2007, and the latest one was released in 2020. So, these manuals, the ITU specifically, ITU household manual was developed to provide methodologies that are related to the core indicators, and at the same time, to develop the trainings that we delivered in different regional workshops and is now available in the ITU Academy. This is an online training platform that provides the different details related to those indicators and the ICT household surveys that could be conducted in countries. So, in 2022, we have now different core indicators related to infrastructure, households, business, e-government, and e-waste indicators. And just recently, we started doing the stocktaking exercise again of the availability of the data and the surveys that are conducted in countries covering the different areas of the core indicators. And we hope to have the final results launched in August during the partnership event that we are organizing in Brazil. So just to highlight that we have now 55 responses and all those countries that responded indicated that there’s a plan to conduct household surveys in the next three years. But there are other activities of the partnership that the ITU is currently involved. I mentioned being chair of the steering committee, but we also do regular capacity building workshops. We did a number of them between 2004 and present. We are regularly reporting to the UN Statistical Commission between this period since 2007. And this was done every two years and at the same time providing our input to the HLPF and the Global Digital Compact. So this is the availability of ICT household indicators. The blue bars you’ll see are the indicators that are available in countries between 2003 to 2005. You’ll note that the maximum number of countries at that time that collected these indicators was 33 countries. And now if you look at the orange bars, particularly on the indicator percentage of individuals using the internet, we have close to 100 countries. So there’s indeed a huge increase in the number of countries collecting this data, but still gap on data availability exists with more than half of the countries not collecting this data. Next slide, please. So I mentioned the ongoing activities. We are regularly updating our handbooks and manuals to ensure that the core indicators remain relevant. We are exploring the use of new data sources such as mobile phone big data and privately held data to complement existing traditional sources. And then the stock taking exercise that I mentioned. you earlier. At the same time, a challenge on data availability, we are continuing to work with donors and potential donors to improve data availability. The one I’m going to mention is particularly a collaboration between the ITU and the European Commission, where we are planning to conduct regional workshops where we will be putting users and producers of data, and we are going to increase the advocacy and information sessions in different events, both in the ITU and the UN and other global events, and we will be disseminating the information regarding the universal and meaningful connectivity indicators and produce publications that will analyze those data. There are a lot more discussions happening just to give more visibility and have more information and secure funding, because there’s still the need for financing for countries to conduct household surveys and do research on this area. That’s all, Susan, and back to you. Thank you.

Susan Teltscher:
Thank you very much, Espy, and really, congratulations. That was a great overview of also some of the main achievements, so congratulations again on the excellent work. Now, let’s move swiftly to Deniz. Deniz, can you provide us with a brief overview of the status of the e-government indicators and what are some of the future challenges? Over to you.

Deniz Susar:
Thank you. Thank you, Susan. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here so early. My name is Dennis Susar. I’m coming from the Digital Government Branch at UNDESA. We are part of the steering committee, and we are responsible for ICT in-government indicators, together with other agencies in the partner. To collect the ICT and e-government indicators, I’ll briefly mention about the e-government survey. This is the survey that we look at e-government development in 193 UN member states. We started also looking at the most populous city in 2022 with all 193 countries. Our methodology is based on some ITU indicators, telecommunication infrastructure index, one-third human capital such as mean years of schooling, enrollment rate, etc. The third one comes from our own assessment, online service index we call it. We basically look at the national portals of UN member states. You just see the categories, subcomponents of the online service index here. You can look at our data in more detail in this website publicadministration.un.org. When you go to this website, if you go under data, you will see that there is ICT in government indicators, which is part of the partnership. These indicators have been updated in 2022. Core list of ICT indicators, you see them at the bottom of this slide there. This is presence of national e-government strategy, presence of a digital ID or similar authentication, presence of public procurement portal, e-participation and open government data. In our most recent survey to member states, we received around 150 out of 193 responses. The remaining missing data is also collected by the researchers we recruit. I will just briefly give you what is the current status now. please. So here, this is showing you the all digital identity e-government strategy and public procurement portal. The red is digital identity, green e-government strategy, and blue public procurement portal. It’s just in one picture, everything. As you see, you can, the averages are in the dotted lines. You see that Oceania is really behind in digital identity and public procurement, Africa is really behind. So this is just giving an idea for us where we can invest. Next please. And the next slides, we will go faster because of time and also they are just repeating the same information. So in the previous slide, you’ve seen e-government strategy. Here you see digital identity. Next, public procurement. Here, e-participation, we construct this index by using our own collection method. So you just see the top 10 countries, I think, here in e-participation. And similarly, we also construct the open government data, which you will see in the next slide by using our data here. This is just showing you where it comes from in the e-government survey in table 8.13. And also in the previous sections, you can find more information about the methodology. And just to conclude, next slide please. The next version of the UN e-government survey will be launched in September during the summit of the future. In order to construct e-government survey, as I said, we send out a questionnaire to all member states, which we call it member states questionnaire, and also the cities, which we call it local government questionnaire. Next. So we will have four chapters. We will have an addendum on AI, the use of AI in public sector will be the focus. Next, please. Very briefly, this, I think, is coming a lot to ITU as well from the member states about our methodology. Our e-government development index will still be one-third online service assessment, one-third human capsule, one-third telecommunication infrastructure. But for example, if you look at the bottom of this telecommunication infrastructure, we are removing fixed broadband subscription for 100 inhabitants this year. And we are introducing affordability, again, thanks to the work of ITU. And also, we are introducing something called e-government literacy to assess the people’s capacity to use e-government. And this will be our new addition. And I hope that I’ll be able to share more information about that in the future. Next, I think we are about to come to an end. I will not go to details of e-government literacy, but you can find it online. Next. Yeah, OK. This is just showing the timeline. I think this is what I wanted to say in four minutes. Thank you. Thank you.

Susan Teltscher:
Thank you so much, Deniz. And I’m very impressed, because I’ve been seeing this e-government survey from the early stages, and just seeing how much it has evolved, and also the new indicators that you are adding, and that you keep developing this, and make it into a really useful tool for government. So congratulations, and thanks a lot for the excellent presentation. So now we are going to move to Angtet. And I will give the floor to Thomas. Can you please provide us with an overview of the e-commerce and digital economy indicators, and also what are some of the future challenges? Over to you, Thomas.

Thomas van Giffen:
Thank you very much, Susan. Yeah, I’m very happy to be here. And I will give a bit of a high-level overview of progress in this area, the challenges that we still see, and also touch a little bit on where we see this. the work going in the future. So to start off, we see that the measurement work in this area has evolved from covering ICT used by businesses, trade in ICT goods and services to also measuring other aspects of the digital economy, such as digitally deliverable services or transactions through digital intermediary platforms. Regarding this letter, we have a recent publication, Business E-commerce Sales and the Role of Online Platforms, which provides updated business e-commerce sales statistics for 43 developed and developing countries representing about three quarters of global GDP and exports and focusing on online retail sales and transaction values reported by online platforms. Regarding the core indicators on ICT used by businesses themselves, we see that these are routinely produced by developed countries and increasingly so also by developing countries, either in dedicated surveys or as modules in regular business surveys. Over the years, Angtat has published several technical notes on this topic and manuals and handbooks, including the Manual for the Production of Statistics on the Digital Economy and recently the Handbook on Measuring Digital Trade together with the IMF, OECD and WTO. Angtat’s mandate in this area has also further been strengthened with the establishment of a working group on this topic in 2019 and Angtat has continuously provided technical assistance and capacity building based on the handbook and manual to almost all countries by now since 2007. Next slide, please. Regarding challenges, we see that there are still gaps in the data and especially for lower-income countries. For instance, the ICT and business indicators we have outside of Eurostat and OECD countries, we have data for about 28 countries and not necessarily for all years. So there’s still work to be done there. We see that national statistical offices still need quite a bit of support to produce data. And we see also a room to strengthen collaboration with central banks, telecom regulators and customs to get the data. Regarding the digital economy, there is no one data set that can really give the full picture and different data focuses on different issues such as the nature of the products, the production or the transaction element of it. And certain elements still remain ill-measured and we’ve tried to focus especially on cross-border e-commerce value recently, which also requires a clear distinction between the domestic activities and international e-commerce. But there are also other areas still. In this context, we see that there is scope to use non-survey sources. For example, digital supply use tables and digital trade frameworks are already being used to measure digitally ordered e-commerce and card payment data can also form a rich source of information in this area. However, there are also legal, methodological and resource challenges to overcome. Next slide, please. Just looking briefly at the future, we see that the measurement work continues to develop the methodological work in this area. And we will also be revisiting the core indicators list and adapt them as necessary to the needs of policymakers and also continue to work with other international organizations in this area. And in this context, I want to highlight the publication, Measuring the Value of E-commerce, which is an initial stock dating by the UNCTAD task group on measuring e-commerce value. And this task group brings together experts and experience from over 25 countries and international organizations to develop internationally agreed guidelines and recommendations on measuring the value of e-commerce sales and purchases by businesses. And we aim to publish a methodological guidance on this in the coming year. The task group will also report on progress in this area to the working group, which will take place on 11 and 12 December of this year. And we, of course, invite everybody involved in this area to to participate in this process. And we we also continue to provide technical assistance and capacity building on this topic. Thank you very much.

Susan Teltscher:
Thank you so much, Thomas. And for me, it’s also really exciting to see the work and how it has continued in UNCTAD from the very beginning. UNCTAD has been a core partner to the partnership, and I can see that you are very strongly continue to be involved. And I can also see the evolution of the work itself on measuring e-commerce and e-business and all the related indicators that are very important for for the constituencies to to have. So congratulations and good luck in the in the continuation of of this work. We are now going to move to our panelist from ILO, and I’m inviting Michael to share with us some of the latest developments in ICT and labor statistics, which I believe is some of the recent additions to the list of indicators. So where do we stand on that? Yeah. Tell us.

Michael Frosch:
Well, the work has started, I would say. I didn’t bring a presentation because I realized I will never make it in five minutes if I start to show slides. But maybe we can make it available afterwards because I. actually do have one. There are two streams of work that we are currently engaged in that I would like to highlight. First of all in relation to the measurement of the ICT. So at the end of last year we had the 21st ICLS which is our big standard setting conference and at that conference a new resolution concerning statistics on the informal economy was adopted. And to support that resolution we have carried out a gendering informality project with the objective to improve tools and recommendations for countries on how to measure the informal employment but also going beyond that looking into how to enable countries to collect statistics that can provide a better context to the situation of both women and men in informal employment and owners of informal enterprises. And one component of that project was to look into the possibility to develop a short effective module that could measure ICT uptake in an informal context. So we included a few set of questions within our testing that would allow countries to look into ICT usage, barriers, access and so on. And these questions were tested in a series of cognitive and quantitative tests in Uganda and Peru. And we are currently analyzing the results but looking at the preliminary results it seems that first of all most of the questions worked very well so that’s always encouraging. But in addition it also seems that it would enable countries to actually capture some interesting statistics that could provide a better context particularly around the situation. of independent workers that owns and operate informal enterprises or carrying out informal activities. So to give you some examples based on the pilot we did in Uganda we could see that there were more male and females that have access to mobiles with internet connections. We could see that the primary use of internet devices among informal independent workers was to communicate with clients, it was to make transactions of payments and looking at the barriers among those independent workers that did not have access to internet or to technical devices then of course cost was a main issue, cost of equipment, cost of services. But we could also see that more women than men stated that lack of knowledge was an important barrier for why they didn’t use internet as part of carrying out their business activities and that of course has high interest from a policy perspective. So this is just to underline the type of data that can be produced if countries include this as part for example of their labor force survey. So looking at the next steps well then we will finalize and analyze and this will be published as part of a report that will come out later on this year and then we will also consolidate the questions, package it as a short small module that countries can link to their labor force survey and then of course we will encourage countries to do so. So that’s one important stream that we’ve been engaging in. Another one, the last one I also want to measure which also links a little bit with what we just heard but that is the work we are about to engage in when it comes to digital platform work and digital platform employment. So here there is a strong policy need for data, there is need for data that can can facilitate this ongoing discussion around what is the impact of digital platforms when it comes to the area of work. And due to this policy need, we there are some countries that have tried to measure different aspects of what we can call digital platform employment. But countries have used different methods, different definitions, different approaches. So this, of course, really hampers the possibility to access any comparable data. There’s been some development recently within this area from the point of view of labor statistics last year, and a joint OECD-ILO-Eurostat handbook was published on the measurement of digital platform employment and digital platform work. And this handbook is an important first step. It provides some input to definitions and some ideas around the conceptual framework, and also gives some recommendations when it comes to data collection. But it’s clear that this is only a first step and more work is for sure needed. We need to provide stronger definitions, we need to provide stronger recommendations for how countries can collect digital platform employment. So this was also discussed at the last ICLS and there we received a strong mandate by countries to start with this work with the objective to develop statistical guidelines that should be discussed at the next ICLS, the 22nd ICLS in 2028. So that work will start this year, and we will establish a working group consisting of countries from all different regions, observers, organizations, and we will also have employers and workers representatives within the working group. And I think I will stop there.

Susan Teltscher:
Great, thank you. Thank you so much, Michael. And also congratulations to you and ILO. I know there’s a lot of demand for this kind of data. It has been all along and it’s really good to see the different initiatives, especially also on the informal workers. In fact, yesterday, your DG at the summit talked about this and mentioned, you know, the large proportion of the population working in the informal economy and how difficult it is because of the lack of data to assess what is actually the impact of the technologies and even more on AI. So there is a lot of need for more data on this and it’s very good to see those initiatives also on the platform work. So congratulations and thank you very much and now we will swiftly move to our remote speaker from UNITAR. Kees, are you online? Can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. Do we need headphones?

Dr. Kees Balde:
The discussion. Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? I am speaking right now. Can you hear me? I am speaking. Hello? Could you please let me know? Yes, we can hear you. Thanks a lot for that feedback. Yeah, sorry that I couldn’t be there in person. However, I’m also delighted to also present what we have done for the partnership in the past around, you know, 10 years with the work on e-waste statistics. Next slide, please. We started this work around 10 years ago to support, first of all, data collection and harmonization across the world because back then e-waste was a rising problem. There were many reports out indicating that it’s bad for the environment and a lot of e-waste is being dumped in the developing south. And there were no reliable data and statistics available to differentiate between facts and myths. And this was really blurring and distorting a healthy debate towards solutions on electronic waste. So therefore, the task force has been established to measure e-waste statistics. It resulted in two guidelines which were made by the task group, also publicly consulted with researchers, with practitioners dealing with e-waste on a daily basis, and also with the member states who are producing data on this. It has been quite a success story. A part of the methodology which were in these guidelines have been adopted in European Union legislation. So the calculations performed in these guidelines are carved in stone in European Union legislation. And outside of the European Union, many countries are also following the principles laid down in these guidelines, especially the ones which are starting with developing legislation. They closely look into this work. And secondly, it’s also the basis for the global e-waste monitors and for national and for regional monitors, which are produced by the United Nations and also by universities and academia. So this methodology or part of the method where it’s relevant is also heavily used and also cited in the scientific domain. Next slide, please. However, the work is not done because the world is evolving and also the questions around e-waste are kind of like evolving too, which is in a way positive. So we are planning to update the second edition of the guidelines this year to also reflect the latest changes and the latest findings and all the work that has been done in the methodology. So we will revise the technical parameters in the guidelines, which are the so-called UNU keys, that’s a product-based classification, which the practitioners are using at a national level to compile statistics on this. So it will be a technical like update to also reflect the latest changes. We will also take a deep dive into the material compositions so because we all know that e-waste contains of valuable metals and also hazardous materials and there’s more need by decision makers to get the information on that also in data and statistics, also in context of the circular economy. This is all compatible with the principles of the framework, so we will expand that. On the other side, there has been a lot of work done in the past decade on mapping the transboundary movement of e-waste, so between borders, how to integrate household surveys mathematically into the framework, so not just having a household survey, what does your household’s own laptop but also how this could be this information results in better data on in the overall mass balance of the of the of the of the material flow of the laptop and we also want to reflect the latest you know changes in the in the global specifications in particular for the Basel Convention and the trade statistics and we will expand on on on country and regional like showcases where some advances have been made and and this will not be limited to the global north but it will also include some examples from Colombia from Belarus from from Central Asia from Africa so also showcasing that yes it is possible to apply this framework across the entire globe although still a lot of resources are definitely needed to to increase the coverage of the official statistics following the guidelines next slide please if you would like

Susan Teltscher:
please can I please ask you to wrap up because

Dr. Kees Balde:
we’re my final slide it’s my final slide so we are in the process we are now drafting the second the second edition of the of the of the guidelines we have and I would like to also get your input into this by the end of this year we we will have a third version which we will hopefully publish in 2025 so if you’re interested in you know joining next slide please please reach out to me by by email and also if you would like to know more about all the tools that we have made to promote this work at the at the national level. Sorry for this, Susan, happy to wrap up.

Susan Teltscher:
Thank you. Thank you so much. And sorry about that. But we are running a little bit late. So we just need to speed up a bit. And I will therefore also limit my comments. But thank you so much for this really interesting presentation. And the e-waste, of course, indicators are critical and very, very important. So it’s very good to have this component also as part of the partnership. So let me now move to Alex, Alexandre Barbosa from CETIC-BR in Brazil. And Alex has been collaborating with the partnership for a long, long time. We’ve known each other for so many years. I don’t even remember. But it was the initial stages of the partnership. And he has been very, very helpful also to the work of the partnership, because Brazil is implementing a lot of the core indicators and other indicators, in fact, pioneering other indicators that then the partnership can incorporate and testing indicators and contributing to the work on e-measurement very, very actively. So very great to have you here. And without further ado, please go ahead and share with us your insights.

Alexandre Barbosa:
Thank you very much, Susan. Well, in my very short time, I’m going to give you a historical perspective on the partnership and its relevance for not only Brazil, of course, but globally, and also share with you some potential contributions that we may have in terms of future work of the partnership. As Susan has already highlighted, the partnership was launched in Sao Paulo, in Brazil. So it’s a great pleasure to be here with you after 20 years of this inception. And Brazil was one of the first, if not the first, because in that same year, 2004, NIC.br, the Brazilian network information center, along with the National Statistical Office in Brazil, IBGE, We included one model of ICT household indicators in the National Household Survey. So it was the beginning of the history of the data production of ICT statistics in Brazil. And after that, in 2005, CETIC was created with the mission of producing public statistics in terms of measuring access and use of digital technologies in different sectors. And we adopted all the standards, methodological standards that were defined and approved by the partnership in terms of households led by ITU, enterprise led by UNCTAD, and more recently, UNDESA, the set of indicators. So we are very much aligned. And in these 20 years, we not only had the opportunity to participate in all the revisions of the manual, along with José Luis, that is here with us. So we participate in the revision. We followed up all the expert group meetings to revise the indicators. And we also had the chance to translate some material from UNCTAD and from UNDESA into Portuguese, which is a non-UN language. So this is really very important. Because now we have 20 years, a time series of household indicators in Brazil with a high quality internationally comparable data and disaggregated data, which is quite essential for policymaking. So this overview of the historical perspective, my first point. And just to conclude this first point, in my opinion, the work conducted by the partnership is really crucial to sustain an ongoing and collaborative process to face the challenge for the development of this set of indicators. And more than that, the partnership has been providing technical support, technical assistance and capacity building to member states. Well, but let me say that we have been, member states have been suffering, being pressured to produce new ICT statistics in different areas. And here I come to my second point. We started in 2012, following OSCD survey model on health, we started collecting data on the access and use of ICTs by healthcare establishments and by healthcare professionals. So we have two different data unit analysis. And please, the next slide, sorry, the previous one, please. So we worked in the OSCD e-task force to define the survey model and three countries pilot this survey model, Korea, Brazil, and Egypt. So we validated, and then in 2015, OSCD published the survey model. And we also worked with WHO, the Pan American Health Association, which is the WHO brand for the Americas. And we launched a regional framework, which is now being used by five countries, including Uruguay, I think is our great partner in these regards. And this survey model is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. You can take a look afterwards. Next slide, please. And here, just a summary of the dimensions that we are covering. We have indicators on ICT infrastructure, governance, IT governance, electronic health records. exchange of information, health information among and between health care establishments, online services like telehealth, new technologies such as the adoption of AI in health, IoT, robotics, and we have a total of 43 indicators for establishments, 20 indicators for nurses, and 23 for physicians. And the certification variables includes legal nature of the establishment like public and private, geographical region, type and size of establishment, area type, capital and non-capital cities, and social demographic variables such as sex, age, level of education for health care professionals. Next slide, please. Just to mention that since we didn’t have a partnership model at that time, we had a group of experts supporting the development of the methodology, and here you can see WHO was one of the organizations supporting the development of these indicators. And nowadays we are working with Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Suriname, and Uruguay. Uruguay was the second country in the region to adopt that, and we have a very close collaboration with the IDB, which is the funder for the financing entity for many countries. Well, I will stop there, and just, Susan, to offer our support if the partnership comes to the decision to develop new indicators in this area, and our commitment to follow, after 20 years following this work, our commitment to support this initiative. Thank you so very much.

Susan Teltscher:
Thank you very much, Alex, and I cannot overemphasize the importance of the work you have done in Brazil, in terms of ICT measurement. It’s been extremely useful, not only for your country, but for all the international work on ICT measurement. And again, yet again, you are pioneering on health and as you have pioneered on many other areas of data collection, and it’s been extremely useful for the entire international community to have you pioneering and implementing all this work. So thank you and congratulations, and I’m sure everybody’s looking forward to continue working closely with you. Now, I know we are running a little bit late, but I want to give a few minutes to our last speaker from Uruguay, to Mercedes. She will bring in some of the policy perspective, and after that, we will wrap up. Over to you, and sorry for the rush.

Dr. Mercedes Aramendia:
Don’t worry. Thank you very much for the invitation. Good morning, everyone. I’m really happy to be here with you, learning from all the experience of the rest of the panels. And in my case, I want to share with you how from the regulator, we use ICT indicators to design, formulate, monitor, and evaluate public policies that are really necessary for us. Nowadays, just the regulator, we have more than 200 indicators. We categorize them among market region, type, category, and also year. These data have been evolving according to the service available and market dynamics, helping us to meet reality in a better way. These data are essential for various key functions for the regulator. Firstly, for economic regulations. For example, we use data in case the operators cannot reach an agreement, for example, for what is related with interconnection costs. So if they ask us to intervene, to request an intervention from the regulator, for us, this information is very important because that helps us to find a good solution. Secondly, for measuring the impact of public policies, for example, we help in the implementation of public number portability and having the information and the data help us to evaluate if we are doing it in a good way, to understand how it is working, if we have to change something or whatever. Thirdly, to provide access to public information and also open data. For example, we attend the request from society to access to public information and also we show the evolution of data traffic, for example. Fourthly, the requirement from other organizations such as ITU, the National Institution of Statistics, the Competition Defense Commission, the Central Bank of Uruguay, among others. And finally, for example, for us it’s very important for market reports, so in that way we can see the evolutions and the variation of the services and how people are using the services. Additionally, we are currently working with the National Institution of Statistics in approach to use the cell phone mobility data for decision making in emergency situations, for example, such as in the pandemic, in a natural disaster, and also for general public services such as transportation, road infrastructure services, among others. The idea is that that data provided by operators will be aggregated and anonymized, ensuring that we will protect the personal data and preventing individual identification. Of course, this project has raised concerns among operators, so we have consulted the regulatory unit, which is specialized in personal data in Uruguay, and now we are waiting for their solution. At the moment, they have said to us that as long as the data are anonymous, aggregated, not identifiable, and retained for a defined time before being deleted, there should be no obstacles to moving forward. So nowadays, we aim to carry out this project collaboratively with the operators. And of course, our goal is to use ICT indicators to improve the lives of their population. Thank you very much.

Susan Teltscher:
Thank you. Thank you so much, Mercedes. And I’m very sorry to rush through, but we have to wrap up the meeting. One comment, there will be in August, there will be a workshop in Brazil to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the partnership, just to keep that in mind also. Closing by congratulations again to everybody, all the members of the partnership to the wonderful work that has been done. I look forward to the next, to the 30-year celebration. So good 10 years ahead to do more work even, and it’s very highly valued by all our policymakers and membership, as you all know. So congratulations, and thank you very much to all the panelists for the great contributions. And the meeting is closed. Thank you.