Taking into account the developments of ICT in recent years, a lot of countries are dealing
with the preparation of statistics on ICT.
In Japan, the Basic Law on Formation of an Advanced Information and Telecommunications
Network Society (Basic Law on IT) was enforced on January 6, 2001, in which the Government is
obliged to prepare official statistics related to ICT.
In Japan, at least 41 kinds of official statistical surveys, including questions related to ICT,
have been conducted in the past five years. Their main purpose, survey items and survey methods are various and
different from each other. To grasp the new development in IT as a whole, ''IT Indicators in Japan'',
which is a new compendium on ICT, was compiled in 2001. Also, ''Information and Communications in
Japan'', which is a white paper published in 2001, presented basic data on the extent to which
IT has permeated the economic activity and people's lives.
In addition, the 11th revision of the Japan Standard Industrial Classification (JSIC) was
published by the Statistical Standards Department, Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Public
Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications (MPHPT) in March 2002 in response to the
change of economy and society including the development of ICT.
The Working Group on Indicators for the Information Society of OECD has been working for several
years in order to prepare internationally comparable and statistically measurable ICT indicators
and related ICT statistics.
In this paper, an overview of the present situation of Japanese official statistics related to
ICT is given with some analysis. In addition, some problems are raised which should be considered
from the viewpoint of the necessity and measurability and so on for the appropriate preparation
of ICT indicators and e-commerce-related statistics.
''IT; Information Technology'' and ''ICT; Information and Communications Technology'' are often
used without any distinction. ''ICT'' is used in this paper except where ''IT'' is used as a
proper noun, as it is considered almost the same as ''IT''.
The views expressed herein are those of the author, and are not necessarily those of the
Statistical Standards Department or any other Japanese government authorities.