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Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development

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Partnership on Measuring ICT4D

​The Partnership is an international, multi-stakeholder initiative to improve the availability and quality of ICT data and indicators. To find out more, download the Partnership brochure.

Core ICT Indicators

The Partnership has developed a core list of ICT indicators to help countries track ICT infrastructure, access, and measure ICTs in households, enterprises, education, and government. The list is revised regularly and was endorsed by the UN Statistical Commission. More>

Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development


The Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development is an international, multi-stakeholder initiative that was launched in 2004 to improve the availability and quality of ICT data and indicators, particularly in developing countries. The initiative is a direct response to the request made by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to produce official statistics to monitor the  information society. ​The Partnership has guided policy makers in producing ICT statistics that are crucial to informed decision-making, including through the identification of a core list of ICT indicators and methodologies to collect these indicators. The Partnership helps developing countries collect ICT statistics, particularly through capacity-building and hands-on training for national statistical offices, and collects and disseminates information society statistics. Its membership has grown from originally 11, to today 14 regional and international organisations. The Partnership work is coordinated by a Steering Committee, which is elected every 3 years. The current Steering Committee is made up of ITU, UNCTAD, and UN DESA​.

The Partnership presented its report  “Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development: Information and communication technology statistics (E/CN.3/2022/21)” at the 53rd Session of the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) that was held in New York on 1-4 March 2022. The Report introduced the revised core list of indicators and highlighted the need to implement the revised guidelines with a view to improving the availability and quality of indicators on information and communications technology (ICT) and better assessing the digital readiness to face crises such as that caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

The UNSC welcomed the report of the Partnership, endorsed the revised core list and expressed the need to improve the availability and quality of ICT indicators. Specifically, the Commission requested that more information be collected on access to and use of ICTs by households and individuals, domestic and cross-border e-commerce, on business use of ICT, and on the ICT sector, including services and internet platforms in education, health, housing, travel and tourism sectors. The Commission supported the collection of e-waste indicators and requested the Partnership to identify the possibilities of using available data sources without conducting a new survey. It further recommended the use of guidelines and training resources produced by the Partnership to strengthen the capacity of national statistical systems for improving the availability and quality of ICT statistics, and for assessing the country's digital readiness in times of crisis, like the current COVID-19 pandemic, given the importance of ICT in e-learning, working from home and e-business; and called for more collaboration between national statistics offices and other public and private ICT stakeholders. The Commission supported the further exploration of use of alternative data, including administrative data, big data, and data-sharing agreements, for measuring ICT statistics in a timely manner and requested the preparation of methodological guidance on the use of big data for ICT statistics, and the organization of events for sharing of experiences in this regard, see Decision 20: Information and communications technology statistics (Item 3q) of the UNSC draft final report available at this link​.