Concepts Used in Statistical Business Registers in View of Globalisation and the Information Society

The globalisation of markets and the development of the information society are two factors increasingly affecting statistical business registers. The article describes a number of problems caused by the globalisation process and the information society as which kind of business units should be recorded-enterprises or enterprise groups, how cross-border ownership, control and cooperation could be identified in the administrative registers, classification of activity in connection with foreign subsidiaries, recording of date of commencement of foreign subsidiaries in a national economy, recording of places of work in the case of teleworking, problems in connection with the recording of individuals involved in teleworking as self-employed persons and the emergence of virtual enterprises. The article also raises the question of whether there is a need for an international satellite register for (transnational) concerns. Both globalisation and the growing information society therefore place new demands on statistical business registers, and these demands might necessitate mobilisation of additional resources for maintaining and developing the registers.     

Measuring the concentration of information and communication technology infrastructure in Australia: Do affordability and remoteness matter?

This study measures the concentration of information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure and expenditure inequality in the disaggregated spatial unit of various locations in Australia. Using survey data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia, a composite concentration index for ICT infrastructure is constructed for urban and rural households. In addition, the Gini coefficient of ICT expenditure is computed to measure the concentration of affordability of ICT services. Findings demonstrate that the concentrations of ICT infrastructure and affosrdability are profound in the Greater Sydney and Greater Melbourne areas. Nevertheless, results indicate that the remoteness of spatial units has a noteworthy impact on the concentration of ICT infrastructure. In addition, canonical correlation analysis reveals that the association between the concentration of ICT infrastructure and inequality in the affordability of ICT services is statistically significant. These findings imply that policy makers should employ a holistic approach that will not only include technological and economic considerations but also examine place-based context in designing an all-inclusive ICT policy.     

The influence of telecenters on rural life and their success correlates: Lessons from a case study in Iran

New information and communication technologies (ICTs) are fast becoming an inevitable and necessary part of rural development projects in Asian countries. Since 2004, about 10,000 Rural ICT Offices have been opened in Iran to improve the lives of those living in rural communities. This research aimed at investigating the influence of the Mazijan ICT Office on the lives of villagers and its success correlates. Data was collected through archival records, observations, structured face-to-face interviews with 210 users, semi-structured face-to-face interviews with the office operator, and six local officials and leaders. Findings were contrasted with the literature to provide more generalized lessons. Results revealed that the Mazijan office was successful in some aspects especially in reducing the need for travels, but not successful in creating job opportunities. Significant positive relationships were found between users' ICT literacy, satisfaction with the services and extent of using services with the extent to which their lives were influenced by the office. The main lessons for promoting the success of telecenters included careful considerations to be given to rural ICT capacity building, improvement of rural telecommunication infrastructures, and providing multiple low-cost and financially viable services.     

Organisational impact of information technology on the banking and insurance sector in Nigeria

The importance of information technology (IT) in the modern day business transaction cannot be over-emphasised. The impact assessment of the technology on any business is expedient so as to objectively determine its influence on a specific aspect of the organisation. This study therefore assessed the organisational impact of IT on some banks and insurance firms in Nigeria.Eight leading commercial banks and six highly rated insurance firms which have branches in Lagos, the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria, and two other important state capitals, were selected for this study.Data were obtained from both the customers and workers at the banks and insurance firms. The data were analysed using percentage and five-point Likert scale to objectively determine the local and global impacts of IT on the banks and insurance firms.The local impact criteria considered are: time savings, error rate reduction, enhanced management decision making, and improved service delivery. On the 5-point likert scale, there was positive impact on IT on the local criteria in the mean range of 1–3 at Lagos and Ibadan with Osogbo having a mean in the range of 3–5 which indicates otherwise. Also, the calculated mean of the IT impact on global criteria such as competitive advantage, high revenue generation, market segmentation and forecasting are in the range of 1–3 for all sampled cites.The study also revealed that there was positive impact of IT on both the induced local and global criteria. The induced local impact criteria identified are competitive advantage, market segmentation, high revenue generation, and forecasting while development of business niche, increased market share and network insecurity constituted the induced global impact criteria.     

信息通讯技术(ICT)在新鲜农产品供应链管理中的应用:欧洲和中国经验的对比分析

分析ICT技术在新鲜农产品供应链中的应用;识别影响ICT技术应用的促进和制约因素;比较分析中国和欧洲（英国、德国和希腊）新鲜农产品供应链管理中ICT技术的应用情况。以ICT技术的复杂性以及ICT技术在新鲜农产品供应链中应用的调查为基础的,从（1）供应链的功能,（2）供应链的商业模型,（3）供应链的覆盖范围三个维度,重点考察了供应链的三个主要功能：订单管理,库存管理,以及运输和配送管理。     

Future Directions for the Teaching and Learning of Statistics at the Tertiary Level

Significant advances in, and the resultant impact of, Information Technology (IT) during the last fifteen years has resulted in a much more data based society, a trend that can be expected to continue into the foreseeable future. This phenomenon has had a real impact on the Statistics discipline and will continue to result in changes in both content and course delivery. Major research directions have also evolved during the last ten years directly as a result of advances in IT. The impact of these advances has started to flow into course content, at least for advanced courses. One question which arises relates to what impact will this have on the future training of statisticians, both with respect to course content and mode of delivery. At the tertiary level the last 40 years has seen significant advances in theoretical aspects of the Statistics discipline. Universities have been outstanding at producing scholars with a strong theoretical background but questions have been asked as to whether this has, to some degree, been at the expense of appropriate training of the users of statistics (the 'tradespersons').
Future directions in the teaching and learning of Statistics must take into account the impact of IT together with the competing need to produce scholars as well as competent users of statistics to meet the future needs of the market place. For Statistics to survive as a recognizable discipline the need to be able to train statisticians with an ability to communicate is also seen as an areà of crucial importance.
Satisfying the needs of society as well as meeting the needs of the profession are considered as the basic determinants which will derive the future teaching and training of statisticians at the tertiary level and will form the basis of this presentation.     

Measuring the Diffusion of Information and Communication Technology in Society and its Effects: Canadian Experience

Statistics Canada has measured the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for close to 15 years in industry and more recently in households and it has developed a body of knowledge on the effects of the use of these technologies. While ICTs have long been used in manufacturing processes, the use of computers and networks, and a growing number of ways of accessing networks, are changing the way business is done and lives are led. This paper provides examples of ICT use in private and public institutions, in households, and by individuals. It goes on to illustrate the consequent development of electronic commerce and of other uses of the Internet and concludes with some implications for the development of official statistics in light of policy requirements.     

Development in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Statistics at the Australian Bureau of Statistics

This paper outlines the ICT statistical developments that the ABS has undertaken over recent years. These developments have been on both the supply side (ICT industry) and the demand side (use of IT by sector). The content of ABS ICT surveys has changed significantly over the last few years and are expected to develop further in line with industry changes and emerging policy needs.
Recent developments in household collections have been the inclusion of IT use questions in the 2001 Census of Population and Housing and in various ABS social surveys such as Children's Participation in Culture and Leisure Activities. Annual business IT use surveys are now conducted and include topics such as Internet commerce and IT security. Biennial ICT industry surveys are conducted to provide data on ICT production, imports and exports, ICT industry employment, performance and structure information. An Internet activity survey is run every six months and provides regional Internet access details and infrastructure details on Internet service providers.
A major development for 2002–03 will be the compilation of an ICT satellite account. ABS intends to produce an ICT Information Development Plan to guide its future statistical development work in the ICT field.     

Akaike-type criteria and the reliability of inference: Model selection versus statistical model specification

Since the 1990s, the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and its various modifications/extensions, including BIC, have found wide applicability in econometrics as objective procedures that can be used to select parsimonious statistical models. The aim of this paper is to argue that these model selection procedures invariably give rise to unreliable inferences, primarily because their choice within a prespecified family of models (a) assumes away the problem of model validation, and (b) ignores the relevant error probabilities. This paper argues for a return to the original statistical model specification problem, as envisaged by Fisher (1922), where the task is understood as one of selecting a statistical model in such a way as to render the particular data a truly typical realization of the stochastic process specified by the model in question. The key to addressing this problem is to replace trading goodness-of-fit against parsimony with statistical adequacy as the sole criterion for when a fitted model accounts for the regularities in the data.