Information Society: from Statistical Measurement to Policy Assessment

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(No Transcript)
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Information Societyfrom Statistical
Measurementto Policy Assessment

• Tony Clayton
• UK Office for National Statistics

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Information Society

• The challenge of permanent change

• Definitions of ICT products and services are
  still changing as applications progress
• Attention has broadened from e-commerce (simple)
  to e-business (complex)
• Real business models are changing, both within
  and between countries
• New social patterns and work structures are
  evolving - driving and enabled by technology
• Can National Statistics Offices measure this
  changing world fast enough?

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• Shared economic questions

• How does the growing importance of intellectual
  assets (technical, organisational,human,
  knowledge) change value creation how can public
  policy make these assets work most effectively?
• How do structural changes (more services and
  intangibles) affect economic and social behaviour
  and policy priorities?
• How do global networks and value chains, within
  and between firms, affect behaviour, and
  governments ability to achieve policy objectives?

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• Macro-economic challenges

• ICT impacts the measurement of outputs and inputs
• - hedonics
• - chain linking
• How to deal with new outputs and assets?
• - extending the list information, knowledge,
  capabilities
• Changing relationships between inputs and outputs
• - complementary assets and productivity
• - cross-border (or inter-regional) intangibles

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Lessons from coping with change

• Definitions
• - critical to be precise and avoid ambiguity
• - comparison, cross sectional and over time,
  essential
• Learning
• - not enough to learn from your own experience
• Benchmarking outcomes and policy
• - where are examples of success?
• - which lessons from good practice are
  transferable?
• Where is value really added?
• - pay off from looking at firm level data

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• Achieved so far ...

• National accounts measures
• - software, databases
• - chain linking and hedonics
• Satellite accounts for information economy
• OECD frameworks to measure enterprise and
  household ICT access and use
• EU structural indicators, and eEurope 2005
  metrics
• Range of SINE initiatives, which spurred NSOs
• Academic and business initiatives on impacts
• Moving towards international WSIS core
  indicators

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• UK focus to support policy

• Benchmarking not only outcomes for the
  information society and economy, but also
  policies to promote innovation and good practice
• Evaluating impacts of ICT adoption in the
  economy, to improve understanding of policy
  levers, and the way they can affect behaviour and
  performance
• a shared agenda across government

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Benchmarking Framework
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• Approach to comparison and learning

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• Benchmarking lessons

• Relevant and comparable data still hard to come
  by in 2002
• Need to quality mark comparisons
• Major gap area for comparable data in government
  use
• Gap in comparable analysis for quantifying
  economic impact

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• Assessing Impact

• Initial work mainly macro - but suffered from
  lack of comparability in national measurement
• Advantage of firm level analysis is that it deals
  with units that are surveyed on similar basis
• Helps to explain how competitive processes
  actually work
• OECD project to share and repeat comparable
  analysis across countries - valuable pooled
  experience

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Firm level data 1) market dynamics
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Firm level data 2) productivity effects differ
Successful e-business applications in
manufacturing usually tackle upstream supply
chain issues...
but e-business application success in service
firms more often includes electronic links to
customers
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• Development challenges

• Speed of change - can Statistics Offices meet
  demands?
• Build and agree the contribution of information
  and knowledge in National Accounts
• Exploit micro-data to understand the role of
  knowledge at enterprise level
• Better metrics for innovation, recognising the
  role of multinational enterprises in invention
  and diffusion
• Comparability in human capital / skills measures
• Assessing impact of digital access and literacy
  for households and labour markets.

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• tony.clayton_at_ons.gsi.gov.uk