Knowledge indicators: measuring information societies in Asia-Pacific International Telecommunication Society Asia-Australian Regional Conference Perth, Australia June 2003 Vanessa Gray International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

Overview What is the information society? How knowledge indicators help us to understand a country’s information society readiness Knowledge indicators in Asia-Pacific The knowledge index

Information Society readiness… …a society’s ability to use and benefit from information and communication technologies ICT USE Knowledge InfrastructureAffordability

Four clusters of indicators School enrolment (3) –Primary –Secondary –Tertiary Educational attainment (3) –Primary –Secondary –Tertiary Newspaper readership (1) Language (2) –Diversity –Ability to understand other languages Education Language Reading Schooling

Internet users in Asia-Pacific Over 200 million Internet users in Asia-Pacific (2002) At the same time the region shows great disparities in Internet penetration Source: ITU

School enrolment Source: ITU (Internet penetration). UNESCO (school enrolment data). ITU Internet Case Studies (ICT in schools data) and national governments. Tertiary school enrolment data is based on total number of tertiary students (UNESCO) and population data (ITU). The data for China refers to the year 1999/2000. Note: * 1998/99 data ** *** 1996.

Educational attainment Source: ITU adapted from NECTEC’s 2002 Internet user profile survey and the Indonesian Internet service provider association (APJII), Enrolment measures potential whereas attainment measures where a country is at now Just as important as school enrolment There is a strong link between educational attainment and Internet use

Newspaper readership Source: ITU adapted from ITU World Telecommunication Indicators Database and World Press Trends 2002.

Language Source: ITU adapted from Global Reach, Global Research Institute Ability to understand other languages –People not familiar with an ‘Internet’ language, cannot take advantage of vast amounts of content & applications Diversity –The more diversity, the less relevant single- language content will be and the harder to achieve economies of scale

Diversity The more languages used in a country the less economy of scale in developing Internet content Less content available for lesser used languages The higher the value, the less likely it is to find 2 people that speak the same language Number of languages spoken Source: ITU adapted from Ethnologue Korea has 2 national languages and a diversity index of 0.0

Understanding other languages The ability to understand an “Internet” language, especially English, enhances ICT usage Ability to understand popular languages also increases amount of content users can access Source: ITU adapted from National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC). Internet User Profile of Thailand, 2002

The knowledge index An example from Hong Kong, China Source: ITU based on data from UNDP-HDI (Schooling); World Press Trends 2002 (Newspaper circulation); Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong, China (Education and Language).

Conclusion Countries need to identify their knowledge base to measure their information society readiness Ideally countries should measure ICT literacy In the absence of more specific ICT user and usage data, the knowledge index can help measure a country ’ s information society progress and potential