Updated ITU handbook and manuals on tracking global ICT development with data
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) released new editions of two technical reference documents that lay out the standards and definitions for the collection of internationally comparable ICT statistics. The first is the ITU Handbook for the Collection of Administrative Data on Telecommunications/ICT which provides more than 90 internationally agreed indicators to track global ICT developments, focusing on indicators mainly collected by national regulators from the telecommunication services sector. The second is the ITU Manual for Measuring ICT Access and Use by Households and Individuals which is a practical tool that looks especially at demand side indicators, mostly collected by national statistical offices. Both the handbook and the manual are key reference documents for ITU member states in collecting the data that feed into the World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Database, which contains time series data for more than 180 telecommunication/ICT statistics.