Community access and how to measure it – ITU takes the lead
Access to information and communication technologies (ICT) is a critical topic,
particularly in the on-going global discussion on how to bring the benefits of
the information society to everyone.The World Summit on the Information
Society (WSIS), the first phase of which was held in Geneva in December 2003,
has provided a fresh impetus for international efforts to bridge the digital
divide. WSIS produced a Declaration of Principles and a Plan of Action that
recognize that ICT infrastructure is crucial in achieving the goal of digital
inclusion. The United Nations Millennium Declaration also acknowledges ICT as an
important tool to achieve the overall Millennium Development Goals. But how do
we measure the true extent of access to ICT and to the information society?
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ITU 050002
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Jorge Álvarez Hoth, Mexican
Vice-Minister of Transport and Communications addressing delegates at the
Global Indicators Workshop on Community Access to ICT in Mexico City |
Identifying the right indicators to collect meaningful data is crucial to
clarify the real magnitude of the digital divide in both its domestic and
international dimensions. One aspect of access to ICT that has not received due
attention is community or public access. The growing number of people,
particularly in the developing world, that access ICT at public facilities,
calls for the development of appropriate indicators to reflect this reality.
ITU’s role
In mid-November 2004, ITU, together with the Mexican Ministry of Transport and
Communications, organized the "Global Indicators Workshop on Community Access to
ICT". ITU took the initiative to organize the workshop as part of its overall
responsibility to track access to and use of ICT. As the main source of
ICT/telecommunication statistics that can be compared globally, ITU has a clear
mandate to develop community access indicators. The workshop was a major step
towards implementing the goals and objectives articulated in the WSIS Plan of
Action. In particular, the conclusions of the workshop will help respond to the
Plan’s call for comparable statistical indicators, "including community
connectivity indicators". Over 110 participants — including 32 women — from
nearly 60 countries took part in the workshop and agreed to a set of indicators
for measuring access to community ICT facilities (see
Table
1).
| Figure 1 — Why community access matters… |
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Source: ITU, adapted from national
surveys.
Note – Mexico’s 2004 data are preliminary results. Mauritius’s data
refer to 2002.
For Canada, 1.2 per cent refers to Canadian households reporting that a
member uses the Internet from an Internet café. |
Why community access matters
It has been widely acknowledged that traditional indicators alone — such as the
number of fixed telephone lines — are not sufficient to identify the extent of
the digital divide. Nor can they tell the entire truth about the potential of
digital opportunities.1 The vast majority of households in developing
countries do not have modern ICT facilities, such as computers and the Internet.2
In Mexico, for example, only 9 per cent of all households currently have an
Internet connection. In Mauritius, an ICT champion within the African continent,
a 2002 survey showed that 13 per cent of all households were online (see Figure
1, left chart). Household penetration rates are likely to be much lower in many
parts of the developing world. Since only few — and mainly developed countries —
have carried out Internet user surveys, it is difficult to determine the exact
number of public Internet users.Current data suggest that community access is
playing an important role in providing the citizens of most developing countries
with access to ICT — a prerequisite for participating in the information society
and reaping its benefits. An Internet user survey carried out in Peru, for
example, shows that public facilities are a primary location of Internet access
(see Figure 1, right chart).
Even in so-called middle-income economies3 such as Poland and
Bulgaria, over one-third of all those online use public Internet facilities4.
Taking advantage of the potential of community access, the Mexican Government is
determined to enhance nationwide access to ICT. As part of its "e-Mexico"
initiative, it plans to install a total of 10 000 digital community centres
across the country by 2006. While developed countries tend to have lower public
Internet facility access rates (in Canada, only 1.2 per cent of Canadian
households report that a member uses the Internet from an Internet café), some
have used public facilities to spread the Internet to areas that are difficult
to connect. In Spain, "red.es", a public business agency associated with the
country’s Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce, is delivering free and
high-speed Internet access to thousands of public users located in rural areas
of the country that are bereft of broadband access. The project is expected to
benefit over 1.3 million citizens in the coming years.5
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MCIT/Egypt
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Bhutan Telecom |
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One aspect of access to ICT that
has not received due attention is community or public access. Identifying
the right indicators to collect meaningful data is crucial to clarify the
real magnitude of the digital divide in both its domestic and international
dimensions |
A lack of
community access indicators and data
In preparation for the workshop, and to assess the current status of community
access indicators, ITU sent a questionnaire to all telecommunication/ICT
regulators, ministries and national statistical offices6.
While some 80 countries responded to the questionnaire, half of them noted
that no data were available. The data provided by the remaining countries
(around 40) were often incomplete, and showed several inconsistencies. This
suggests that while a number of countries have realized the importance of
community access, there is still a lack of harmonized indicators that can be
compared on a global scale. The collection process also shows a lack of
cooperation, in some countries, among the different agencies dealing with ICT
and statistics. The importance of formal and informal cooperation processes
was highlighted on several occasions during the workshop. Only very few
countries have actually started to collect information on public Internet
access centres (PIAC) as defined in the questionnaire (see Figure 2). This
conclusion was reinforced by the presentations and discussions during the
workshop. Where national initiatives and projects to monitor and track
community access exist, these are usually guided by specific geographic,
societal and economic characteristics and are often not internationally
comparable.
| Figure 2 — How to define
community access facilities: PIACs and DCCs |
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A public Internet access centre (PIAC)
is a site, location, centre of instruction at which Internet access is made
available to the public, on a full-time or part-time basis. This may include
digital community centres, Internet cafés, libraries, education centres and
other similar establishments, wherever they offer Internet access to the
general public. All such centres should have at least one public computer
for Internet access. It is very useful to classify centres by type, as
illustrated by way of an example in Figure 1. A further breakdown into
private and govermental establishments is also necessary. |
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A digital community centre (DCC) is a place where the public can access
Internet services from terminal facilities placed at their disposal.A DCC is
an undertaking based on a government framework for universal access. It
should offer equitable, universal and affordable access. Minimum
requirements for a PIAC to be considered as a DCC include:
- At least one computer and one printer.
- A minimum connection speed of 64 kbit/s per centre to the Internet
service provider (ISP), with an acceptable amount of bandwidth available
to users.
- Support and maintenance.
- Minimum opening hours per week: 20 hours.
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Other PIACs,including cybercafés.Education centres may be
classified as DCC, or PIACs, depending on the conditions they satisfy.
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How to measure community access?
There are different ways of measuring community access, for example, through the
inclusion of a specific question in an Internet user survey. This would provide
information on the number/or percentage of people using public Internet
facilities. Some countries, such as those in the European Union, have started
collecting data on the number of public Internet access points.7 One
major limitation with this indicator, though, is that it does not show the
distribution of facilities. Nor does it provide a basis for a recommended value
since this would be a function of how necessary public Internet access centres
are (which in turn depends on the underlying level of ICT ownership). For this
reason, the approach taken at the workshop was to look at the number of villages
(including towns and cities) with public Internet access facilities.The
workshop was able to identify the core set of community access indicators shown
in Table 1. These, along with a supplementary list of other yardsticks, should
help countries in their choice of indicators when carrying out Internet user
surveys or collecting administrative data from public Internet access centres.
This is a major achievement in that it is the first step towards improving
statistical coverage of community access in a harmonized way. ITU has been
requested to promote the adoption of the community access indicators agreed upon
at the workshop, which also produced a clear set of recommendations. Apart from
guiding ITU in its data collection efforts, the list of indicators provides
national regulators, ministries and statistical offices responsible for
compiling market statistics with a clear guideline on the kind of data they
should collect. For the time being, a major objective is to understand how many
villages, towns or cities within countries have public Internet access
facilities and the percentage of the population these facilities cover. The core
list highlights the need to distinguish between PIACs — the general term used to
refer to any public facility offering Internet access — and so-called digital
community centres (DCC), which must fulfil certain requirements (such as
providing affordable access) and are usually subsidized or run by government.
Hopefully, the clear set of indicators and recommendations of the workshop will
raise the awareness of this crucial topic globally, and increase top-level
policy support to monitor community access.
Table 1 — Indicators to measure
the extent and potential of public Internet access centres (PIAC)
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Indicator |
Remarks |
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Number of villages with
PIACs |
The term "villages" refers to a
nation’s villages, towns and cities. |
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Percentage of the
population with access to a PIAC |
These indicators measure the number of
inhabitants who enjoy PIAC coverage as a proportion of the total
population of the country. It is considered that when a village has at
least one PIAC then the entire population in the community is served by
that PIAC. |
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Potential DCC user
population |
A potential DCC user is anyone of age 6
years or more. |
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Target population for
DCC services |
The target population refers to the
potential population (see above) minus the number of non-community
Internet users (non-community Internet users are those citizens that have
Internet access from a point different from a PIAC, for example at home). |
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Total number of DCCs |
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Total number of other
PIACs |
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Total number of
computers in DCCs |
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Average number of
computers per DCC |
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Number of users per
type of PIAC (DCCs, other PIACs) |
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Actual DCC usage
percentage |
To calculate this, countries should
divide the actual number of DCC users by the target population for DCC
services. A user is defined
as a person who accesses the Internet at least once a month. |
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Average DCC usage rate |
To calculate this, countries should divide the total DCC
usage time
by the total available DCC time. |
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Source: Extracted from
the recommendation made by the Global Indicators Workshop on Community
Access to ICT, Mexico City (Mexico), November 2004 (see
www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/mexico04/). |
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1
The ITU membership, through Resolution 131 of the Plenipotentiary
Conference (Marrakesh, 2002) recognizes that "the basic indicator
traditionally used in the telecommunication field was the number of
fixed telephone lines per hundred inhabitants, but that that indicator
no longer reflects the actual penetration of telecommunication services
in those countries where community access programmes have been
implemented".
2 Even basic infrastructure
needed to use modern ICTs, including electricity, is often not available
to households and thus excludes home access.
3 The term "middle-income" is
used by the World Bank to refer to economies with a GNI per capita of
between USD 746 and 9205 (
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INGEP2003/Resources/gep2003classification.pdf).
4
Public Internet facilities refer to the workshop’s definition of public
Internet access centres, as defined in Figure 2.
5
For more information on "red.es", see document 52 of the Global
Indicators Workshop on community access at
www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/mexico04/doc/ and
www.red.es/
6
The questionnaire included such indicators as the "percentage of the
population with access to a PIAC" in terms of localities
(villages/towns/cities) and population. PIAC coverage was divided into
governmental and private facilities, and included questions about the
type of PIAC (DCC/education centres/others) and the potential and actual
population using DCC services.
7
European Union. eEurope 2005: Benchmarking Indicators (http://europa.eu.int/comm/lisbon_strategy/pdf/655_EN.pdf). |
| Contributed by Vanessa Gray, ITU/ BDT Market, Economics and Finance Unit. |
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