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Theme

There has been a remarkable development in information and communication technology (ICT) in recent years, and the use of ICT is rapidly spreading into various areas deeply in the economy and the society at large. The progress and the prevalence of ICT are giving a strong impact on all aspects of both public and private lives, such as transforming business processes, creating new markets, or changing the way of communication among people.

It is a challenge for official statisticians to grasp statistically such economic and social changes resulting from ICT, and it is necessary to develop statistics with which the present economic and social conditions may be appropriately measured and the relevant information guiding the future directions may be provided to the policy planners and the public at large. Efforts in this field are now being made by international organizations and national statistical offices as well as academic societies. Based on researches and studies done by various individuals and organizations, this meeting is to provide a forum to exchange the views and the ideas on the development of statistics, statistical methodologies, analytical frameworks, and other related matters in this field.

Since this is a very new field for statistics, we would like to cover a wide variety of topics in this field, without limiting the topics too narrowly. So, we would like to welcome the papers dealing with statistical matters related to the topics listed below as examples:

• Measurement of e-commerce
• Key indicators for knowledge-based economies
• Measurement of diffusion of ICT in the economy or society
• Economic effects of ICT
  (e.g. International trade, financial market/transactions, productivity increase, economic globalization, business cycle, employment, training and education, income distribution, household consumption pattern, quality change in products, innovation, etc.)
• Social effects of ICT
  (e.g. Digital divide, human communications, change in quality of life, etc.)
• ICT applied in production and utilization of statistics
• National and international statistical programs concerning ICT
• Other topics

The above list may have a stronger inclination to economic aspects rather than the social aspects. This is because it seems that there are more economic researches than social researches so far. But we would like to welcome the researches focusing on social aspects if there are authors who wish to present their papers in this field.

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