New Delhi, India, 12-14 May 2009

To take advantage of the rapidly changing Information Society, governments need to monitor and benchmark progress in order to design and review national policies and strategies. In order to do so, reliable data and indicators on the access and use of ICTs, and their impact on development have to be defined and collected. Such data and indicators help governments design and evaluate ICT policies and strategies, compare their ICT developments with those in other countries, and adopt solutions to reduce the digital divide. In order to so, different agencies need to work together to identify priority areas and to examine ways of coordinating activities, to maximize available resources and achieve optimum results.

The Seminar on ICT Measurement and Indicators, organized jointly by ITU and the Government of India (Department of Information Technology) was addressed to national ICT policy makers, Industry Associations, Academia, Ministries regulatory agencies and statisticians. It covered issues related to indicators for infrastructure and access, households, business, education, and e-government; benchmarking the information society; measuring impact; measuring ICT and gender; security and trust in the online environment; statistics on ICT-enabled services; and capacity building for ICT measurement.

The seminar provided a forum for national experts and stakeholders to discuss ICT indicators and topics that are important to national policymaking and made suggestions and recommendations to improve the availability of ICT statistics in India.