OECD Efforts to Address the Measurement and Policy Challenges Posed by the Information Society

The OECD has acted as a forum for the discussion of policies regarding the information society for over 20-years, producing guidelines and recommendations in areas such as privacy of personal information, computer security, cryptography, regulatory reform of communications, and most recently on-line consumer protection and the taxation of e-commerce. By and large, this work was undertaken without the benefit of statistical measures. But the economic performance of a number of OECD Member countries during the 1990s underscores that the policy challenges being posed by the information society are increasingly economic in nature—how ICT is affecting productivity, growth rates, inflation, labour markets etc.—necessitating the need for statistically rigorous data. This paper outlines how recent efforts by national statistical offices to improve this situation have allowed researchers to gain new insight into the economic impact associated with ICTs and applications like e-commerce, leading to a number of policy recommendations as to how best to exploit the economic potential of these technologies. The paper ends by outlining important policy issues that require new statistical efforts.