Survey on ICT use by households and individuals: Egypt’s Experience

1. Ministry of Communications and Information Technology Information Center Survey on ICT use by households and individuals: Egypt’s Experience First Workshop of the Regional Project "ICT Indicators and Capacity Building for ICT Measurement in Arab Region", Amman, 25-27 Sept. 2010 Dr. Nagwa El-Shenawy Information Center Director Ministry of communications and Information Technology

2. Content • Measuring the information society in Egypt: • Background and Scope. • Partners. • Workflow. • Dissemination. • ICT use by households and individuals: • Background. • Questionnaire. • Methodology. • Achieved Progress. • Data Cleaning and validation.

3. Background and scope. • Partners. • Workflow. • Dissemination. Measuring the information society in Egypt

4. Measuring the Information Society in Egypt Background and scope • The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) launched national ICT indicators project in 2006 "Information and Communication Technology Indicators Project" with the aim of “measuring the information society in Egypt". • The project has a wide scope, measuring ICT usage in the following areas: • ICT infrastructure and access. • ICT usage by households and individuals. • ICT usage by businesses. • ICT usage in government sector. • ICT usage in public access points. • ICT usage in Education sector. • ICT usage in Health sector (Forthcoming).

5. Measuring the Information Society in EgyptPartners • Central Agency for Public Mobilization And Statistics (CAPMAS). • National Telecommunication Regularity Authority (NTRA). • Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA). • Microsoft.

6. Measuring the Information Society in Egypt Workflow

7. Measuring the Information Society in Egypt Dissemination • Egypt’s ICT Indicators Portal: http://www.new.egyptictindicators.gov.eg/en/Pages/home.aspx • The Future of the internet Economy in Egypt .. Statistical profile • ICT indicators bulletin. • International organizations’ reports.

8. Background. • Questionnaire. • Methodology. • Achieved Progress. ICT use by households and individuals

9. Measuring the Information Society in Egypt Background • MCIT has carried out the survey of ICT use by households and individuals on a regular basis (annually); in order to measure different patterns of ICT usage among Egyptian households. • The survey aims at: • Providing the community and decision makers with the latest figures, trends and developments of ICT usage by households and individuals. • Identifying major characteristics of ICT users. • Identifying the major obstacles that hinder ICT diffusion across the country.

10. ICT use by households and individuals Questionnaire • This questionnaire has been formulated in light of international ICT core indicators recommended by partnership on measuring ICT on development project adopted by many international organizations. • Questions related to E-Government have been formulated according to OECD recommendations. • The questionnaire mainly includes 7 sections: • HH basic indicators. • ICT usage by individuals (Fixed lines, Mobile, Internet, Computer). • ICT usage by households (Fixed lines, Mobile, Internet, Computer). • ICT expenditure. • E-commerce indicators. • E-government indicators. • Security and Privacy considerations.

11. The sample is drawn from the sample of Family Income, Expenditure and Consumption survey (FIECS) of 2004/2005. The sample is a multi-stage cluster and self-weighted representative sample. The survey included 21,000 households (300 areas × 70 households); covering 24 governorates. represented urban and rural areas. ICT use by households and individuals Methodology

12. ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress • Measuring digital divide by: • Geographic location. • Gender. • Income level. • Education level. • Age group. • Employment status. • Measuring Households expenditure on ICTs. • Measuring Security and privacy aspects. • Measuring broadband indicators. • Measuring ICT usage by disabled. • Measuring E-Content.

13. ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress Main Indicators

14. ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress 1.1 Measuring Digital Divide (Urban and Rural) By Geographic location

15. ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress Cont. 1.2 Measuring Digital Divide (Gender Gap) By Gender

16. ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress Cont. 1.3 Measuring Digital Divide (By Income Level) By Income level

17. ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress Cont. 1.4 Measuring Digital Divide (Education level) By Education Level

18. ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress Cont. 1.5 Measuring Digital Divide (by employment status) By Employment Status

19. ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress Cont. 1.6 Measuring Digital Divide (by Age Group) By Age groups

20. ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress Cont. 2. Measuring Household expenditure on ICT The relative importance of expenditure on different ICT services

21. % ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress Cont. 3. Measuring Security and privacy aspects

22. ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress Cont. 4. Measuring broadband indicators Multiple selections were allowed

23. ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress Cont. 5. Measuring ICT usage by disabled persons • The proliferation of different ICT techniques have raised the hope among the disabled persons and have enabled them to reap the benefits of ICT. • In Egypt; MCIT started in 2007 to collect data about disabled persons in the surveyed households and their patterns of ICT usage. Patterns of ICT usage of disabled persons included in HH survey 2009

24. ICT use by households and individuals Achieved Progress Cont. 6. Measuring E-Content Languages used in accessing the internet

25. Data Cleaning and validation: • Cleaning process. • Treatment of non-response cases. • Validation. ICT use by households and individuals

26. ICT use by households and individuals Cleaning process • Statistical information collected can contain errors (Inconsistent responses), so it’s important to apply techniques which optimize the effectiveness of the data and decreasing the incidence of the inconsistent data. it’s necessary to apply rules that define the relations between questions . • The example of this inconsistency may include: • Households using E-commerce or E-government and don’t use the internet. • Households using internet but don’t use the computer. • Individuals have no access to the internet and have responses in internet activities. • The treatment of these cases depends mainly on the value of other reference indicators. (ex. HH using E-commerce, E-government and have internet activities must use the internet, so if their responses related to “internet use” are (No), the statistician should replace it with (Yes).

27. ICT use by households and individuals Treatment of missing data • Missing data has the potential to introduce bias so data collection agencies should strive to reduce the extent of non – response , by means of advertising the survey through the best available media , improved questionnaire and high quality field work . • There two main types of missing data: • Unit non-response. • Item non-response.

28. ICT use by households and individuals Treatment of missing data .. 1. Unit non response • Most of the surveys contain unit non-response error. there are 2 statistical methods to treat Unit non response cases:- • Sample – based : sample – based corrective weighting consists of modifying the original sample weights by multiplying them by the inverse of the non – response rate. • Population – based : population – based corrective weighting is equivalent to classical post – stratification in which survey data are benchmark against known population totals .

29. ICT use by households and individuals Treatment of missing data .. 2. Item non response • MCIT in cooperation with CAPMAS used “ITU manual for Measuring ICT Access and Use by Households and Individuals” as a guideline for imputation the missing values in HH survey”. • It should be noted that the selection of one or other rule will produce biases in the final estimates. In general, methods based on the replacement of a missing value by a modal, median or average value of the same variable in a set of ‘similar’ records reduces the bias, but also artificially reduces the variance of the population. Source: “ITU manual for Measuring ICT Access and Use by Households and Individuals”

30. ICT use by households and individuals Treatment of missing data .. 2. Item non response • As an example, the statistician can select different rules for imputation the indicator for “internet access” as follow: • Rule 1: A deterministic rule that imputes ‘Yes’ to all missing values for the item ‘Use of Internet’ if the household has access to Internet and ‘No’ otherwise. • Rule 2: A deterministic rule that imputes ‘Yes’ to all missing values for the item ‘Use of Internet’ if the household has access to Internet and the level of education of the individual is ‘Tertiary’, and ‘No’ otherwise. • Rule 3: A rule that imputes the most frequent value of the item ‘Use of Internet’ in the set of records with the same value for ‘Access to Internet’. • Rule 4: A rule that imputes the most frequent value of the item ‘Use of Internet’ in the set of records with the same value for ‘Level of education’.

31. ICT use by households and individuals Treatment of missing data .. 2. Item non response

32. ICT use by households and individuals Validation methods 1. Using Hard indicators as checkpoints for judging the accuracy of some soft indicators: Some ICT usage indicators included in HH survey have a relevant hard indicators, these indicators consider as a good checkpoint for judging the accuracy of soft indicators. Soft Indicators Hard Indicators • HH3 Proportion of households with a fixed line telephone. • Fixed lines penetration. • HH11 Proportion of individuals with use of a mobile telephone • Mobile penetration.

33. ICT use by households and individuals Validation methods Cont. 2. Using some derived indicators to test the accuracy of some other indicators included in HH survey: The accuracy of some other ICT usage indicators included in HH survey can be tested by comparing its value with the value of some derived indicators using official figures. Soft Indicators Derived Indicator • Proportion of households with internet access at home .. Calculated based on official figures of: • Unique number .. (HH accessing internet through dialup). • ADSL household subscription .. (HH accessing internet through ADSL). • % of HH accessing the internet through both dialup and ADSL. • HH7 Proportion of households with Internet access at home.

34. ICT use by households and individuals Validation methods Cont. • Calculation Method of the proportion of HH using internet from home ­using hard data (official sources) • Using the official figures released by Telecom Egypt of unique numbers (that represent the total number of fixed lines that access the internet through dial up), and the figures of ADSL subscribers, we calculated the total number of households using the internet from home through dial or ADSL, which reached 5.6 million in 2010. • To avoid any double counting, we used the percentage of households that access the internet through both dial up and ADSL (which extracted from HH survey and reached 15% in 2009),  to alleviate the double counting in the number of HH using internet from home. • Based on the above calculations, the number of HH using  internet from home reached 5.19 million in 2010. this number represents 29% of the total Egyptian households (which is 18.3 million) in 2010.

35. ICT use by households and individuals Validation methods Cont.

36. ICT use by households and individuals Challenges • MCIT has exerted continuous efforts during the past years to measure ICT usage and impact in Egypt, in addition to its role in socio-economic development; through conducting a number of projects in cooperation with international organizations. • The journey is still long; but we are sure that we are on the right track, believing that sincere cooperation with international organizations and hard work will lead us to achieve our goals. • Many challenges still exist with regard to reviewing the current methodologies, developing a new set of indicators measuring various dimensions of ICT, as well as reviewing the existing indicators to ensure their credibility and reliability.

37. Thanks