1. An overview of ITU’s collection, processing, analysis and dissemination of telecommunication / ICT statistics. The presentation will highlight the scope and range of indicators along with the challenges of data collection. It will also show the data dissemination and other regular publications of the unit, as well as new and ongoing projects of the STAT Unit.

2. The World Summit on the Information Society’s, through its Plan of Action, targets to connect villages with ICTs and establish community access points by 2015. In order to monitor progress towards the WSIS target on village connectivity, a paper was commissioned to provide an overview of the global situation concerning the ‘percentage of villages with access to ICTs' (in terms of telephone access and internet access). During the session the results of the study as well as issues related to the collection of data on community access indicators will be discussed. It will also present the work of some countries that have started to collect community access indicators.

3. A changing telecommunication/ICT sector and international calls for the development of new policy-relevant measurements need to be reflected through the identification of new indicators. A brief overview of ITU’s indicators, including new indicators identified by the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development, will be presented. The session will also include a discussion on mobile broadband indicators.

4. Given the similar objective, coverage and scope of the two ITU indices - the ICT Opportunity Index (ICT-OI) and the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) – ITU’s membership has called upon ITU to publish a single ICT index to measure and track the digital divide and countries' progress toward becoming information societies. In the last Plenipotentiary Conference, which took place in November 2006, the top policy making body of the Union instructed the ITU to develop a single ICT index and “ to promote an ICT index ... with a view to achieving international consensus on this index”. A background paper has been prepared to discuss the existing indices and to propose a single index. The session will present the overview and the results of the study. It will further outline the objective of the single ITU Index, the methodology as well as the name of the single the index.

5. The session will be open for questions and discussions related to the single index presented in (4). At the end of the session, the meeting should agree and endorse the ITU Single Index.

6. Summary of the discussions of points (2), (3), (4) and (5).

7. Conclusions and way forward. Proposal for date and location of the next World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators meeting.

Back to WICT07 Home page