The document discusses two indexes developed by the ITU to measure the development of ICT - the ICT Development Index and the ICT Price Basket Index. The indexes aim to measure and track ICT progress over time, examine differences among countries, and assess how countries can utilize ICT for growth. The ICT Development Index comprises indicators on access, use and skills, while the ICT Price Basket Index focuses on fixed telephone, mobile, and broadband internet prices. Analysis of the indexes reveals a digital divide, with ICT access largely unaffordable in many African countries.

1. Die Internationale Telecommunication Union (ITU) hat 2010 einen Report Measuring the Information Society herausgebracht
...The ICT Development Index und The ICT Price Basket Index, mit dem Ländervergleiche möglich sind …
Welche Ziele werden mit der Entwicklung dieser beiden Indizes verfolgt?
The main aims of both indexes are measuring development of ICT.
The index measures:
• The development of ICT in countries and relative to other countries (i.e. track ICT progress over time)
• The digital divide, i.e. differences among countries with different levels of ICT development
• The development potential of ICT or the extent to which countries can make use of ICT to enhance growth and development,
based on available capabilities and skills.
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2. Aus welchem Einzelindikatoren setzt sich die beiden Indizes jeweils zusammen?
ICT Development Index
ITU (Access indicators)
• Fixed telephone lines per 100 inhabitants
• Mobile cellular telephone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants
• International Internet Bandwidth (bit/s) per Internet user
• Proportion of households with a computer
• Proportion of households with Internet access at home
ICT use and the intensity of use (Use indicators)
• Internet users per 100 inhabitants
• Fixed broadband Internet subscribers per 100 inhabitants
• Mobile broadband subscribptions per 100 inhabitants
ICT skills and the capacity to use ICTs effectively (Skills indicators)
• Adult literacy rate
• Secondary gross enrolment ratio
• Tertiary gross enrolment ratio
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3. ICT Price Basket methodology is based on following indicators
• Fixed telephone sub-basket
• Mobile cellular sub-basket
• Fixed broadband Internet sub-basket
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4. Stellen Sie aus Ihrer Sicht bedeutsame Resultate der Studie vor, die etwas über die Digitale Spaltung in
Ländern/Regionen aussagen.
• The IDI and the ICT Price Basket are strongly correlated: high IDI values are associated with relatively lower prices, and vice
versacent in developing countries.
• Furthermore, all (41) economies with an IDI value greater than five (compared to a maximum of 7.85 achieved by Sweden) have
an ICT Price Basket value that represents less than two per cent of their monthly GNI per capita
• At 5.7 per cent of monthly GNI per capita in 2009, it lies just below the fixed telephone sub-basket (at 5.9) and well below the
fixed broadband sub-basket
• On average, a high-speed Internet connection represents 500 per cent of aver-
age monthly GNI per capita in Africa, making fixed broadband effectively inaccessible for most people in the region
• Analysis using ICT household data reveals that better educational performance has a positive statistical association with greater
household Internet access, pointing to one possible channel via which the potential benefits of ICTs might occur
• These could occur directly or indirectly, for example by promoting gender equality, especially in the use of ICTs, and in helping
women into economic activity
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5. Diskutieren Sie die Indizes und seine Erläuterungen im Report unter methodischen Aspekten ("Messen der
Informationsgesellschaft / Indikatoren")
ICT Development
As for ICT Development Index, the indicators should correspond to the following three subcomponents of the index (or sub-
indices)
• ICT infrastructure and access
• ICT use (primarily by individuals, but also households, businesses, others as data become available in the future) and the
intensity of use.
• ICT skills (or capacity necessary to use ICTs effectively).
Senitivity Analysis
Sensitivity analysis was carried out to investigate the robustness of the index results, in terms of the relative position in the overall
ranking, using different combinations of methods and techniques to compute the index.
Potential sources of variation or uncertainty can be attributed to different processes employed in the computation of the index
including the selection of individual indicators, the imputation of missing values, the normalization of the data, weighting and
aggregation.
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6. Each of the processes or combination of processes affects the IDI value. To examine the robustness of the IDI results – rather than the
actual values – a number of tests were carried out. The tests computed the possible index values and country rankings for different
combinations of the processes. Results show that while the computed index values change, the overall message remains the same.
The index was found to be extremely robust to different methodologies – with the exception of some countries, particularly countries
in the “high” group.
The relative position of countries included in the “high” group can change somewhat depending on the methodology used. Therefore,
conclusions based on the ranking of these countries should be made with caution. On the contrary, the relative position of countries
included in the “middle” and “low” groups is in no way affected by the methods or techniques applied. Countries in these groups
ranked similar in all index computations (using different methodologies). This confirms the results conveyed by the IDI.
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8. ICT Basket
As for ICT Basket Methodology, it's based on following indicators
A critical step in the construction of the index is to create a complete data set, without missing values. There are several imputation
techniques that can be applied to estimate missing data. Each of the imputation techniques, like any other method employed in the
process, has their own strengths and weaknesses. The most important consideration is to ensure that the data imputed will reflect or
estimate a country’s actual level of ICT access, usage and skills.
Given that ICT access and usage is correlated with national income, hot deck imputation was chosen as the method for estimating the
missing data. Hot deck imputation uses data from countries with “similar” characteristics. GDP per capita and geographic location
were used as the main criteria in identifying countries with similar characteristics. For example, missing data for country A were
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9. estimated for a certain indicator by A further important criterion for the selection of the normalization method was to choose one
that can be replicated by countries.
Therefore, certain methods cannot be applied, for example those that rely on the values of other countries, since those (i.e. the
entire database) might not be available to users.
The first commercial IMT-2000/3G networks only started to be launched in 2002/2003 and ITU started to collect this indicator in
2006. The main problem is that only very few (and mainly developed) countries have started collecting data for mobile broadband
subscriptions and that definitions often vary between countries.
The OECD is currently finalizing a definition for mobile broadband. For countries where data on this indicator are not available, ITU is
using data from Wireless Intelligence2 for ‘3G’ subscriptions with access to data at speeds of 256 kbit/s in one or both directions
(including CDMA 2000 1x EV-DO & W-CDMA). Wireless Intelligence collects these data directly from operators. It should be noted that
these data do not refer to active subscriptions and they do not indicate how many people are actually using IMT-2000/3G networks to
access the Internet. Indeed, some subscriptions to these networks might not even be aware of the possibility to access the Internet,
or they may not make use of this functionality.
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11. Vergleichen Sie den ICT Development Index mit dem ICT Opportunity Index. Welcher der beiden Indikatoren
beschreibt Ihrer Auffassung nach den Entwicklungsstand eines Landes besser/realistischer? Begründen Sie Ihren
Standpunkt
ICT Opportunity Index
The ITU’s 2007 ICT Opportunity Index, which has benefited from the expertise of several international and research organizations, is
based on a carefully selected list of indicators and methodology. It is an important tool to track the digital divide by measuring the
relative difference in ICT Opportunity levels among economies and over time. The different sub-indices allow countries to further
identify their specific weaknesses and strengths.
(Figure 1)
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12. The 2007 ICT-OI, which is an inclusive index and provides measurement across 183 economies, relies on ten indicators that help
measure ICT networks, education and skills, uptake and intensity of the use of ICT (Figure 1). For analytical purposes, economies are
grouped into four categories, ranging from high to low ICT Opportunities. Apart from cross-country comparisons, the index’s
methodology highlights relative movements between 2001-2005. A comparison of annual average growth rates shows which countries
are making progress and how fast.
ICT skills and the capacity to use ICTs effectively.
Ideally, this component of the index would include indicators that capture the level of ICT skills in countries. However, such data
currently are not collected by most developing countries.
And this part of index is a great «brake» in developing of ICT society in developing countries.
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13. As it's schown on previous picture, ICT skills aren't good represented in ICT Development Index. It make this index not so realistic and
useful for measuring growness and «quality» of ICT society for this countries.
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14. Quellen
1. Report «Measuring the Information Society», Internationale Telecommunication Union (ITU), 2010
2. Armenian report of ICT Development Index and ICT Price Basket http://www.isoc.am/publ/idi.pdf
3. Informationsgesellschaft, «Messen der Informationsgesellschaft/Indikatoren», Michael Möhring
4. ICT Opportunity Index,
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/ict-oi/2007/index.html
5. ICT Development Index - Measuring the Information Society
http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/backgrounders/general/pdf/5.pdf
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