Project funded under FP7
Contract number: 217190
Programme: Cooperation
Instrument: CSA (Support)
Report on EU-LAC comparison of indicators for the knowledge society
public
There has been a great deal of attention paid to measuring Information Society developments. There have been efforts to develop new statistics and systems of indicators to measure the diffusion of new information technologies (IT) in business and to examine levels of use and styles of use (e.g. e-commerce). These efforts are ongoing and provide valuable material with which to compare different countries, regions and industrial sectors. There have also been many efforts to measure information activities, ranging from simple headcounts of information occupations to more elaborate maps of information industries.
Other features of the Knowledge based Society have also attracted a great deal of attention. Indicators are an important instrument for monitoring the dynamics of the Knowledge based Society and to generate information for better policy interventions. In this sense, the main purpose of our research has been to understand the differences between European and Latin American countries in accomplishing their strategies and policies to access to what is called the Knowledge based Society. The central focus of our work was the assessment of the need for an improvement of Knowledge Society indicators and for statistical capacity building in order to capture the dynamics of the Knowledge Society in LAC countries and to make them comparable to EU and OECD standards. For doing so, we have chosen three different approaches.
The first approach was to analyze the use of indicators, mainly based on the OCDE and World Bank methodologies, which are supposed to show the building of knowledge capacity of societies. The first section provides an overview on existing Knowledge Society indicators by carrying out a review of the current status of Knowledge Society statistics in some LAC countries. Besides the differences shown between the European countries and the LAC ones, we also identify the gaps in the construction of indicators amongst the Latina American countries. In order to better understand such differences, we went further in the analysis by discussing in section two which are the socioeconomic conditions required for the access to knowledge.
Another approach was to analyze the innovation surveys as a component of the set of indicators of the Knowledge based Society. It includes three main areas which have been studied by means of literature review and analysis of policy documents: (a) the history and rationale of science and technology statistics; (b) the emergence and characteristics of innovation measurement; and (c) the comparative analysis of European and Latin American innovation surveys. All this is shown in section III.
Finally, in section IV we analyze a particular aspect of the advancement of LAC to the Knowledge base Society through the use of Virtual Education, considered as a new tool to learn and disseminate knowledge. Here, the analysis seeks on two dimensions: the organizational changes in universities that suppose the implementation of Virtual Education services and methods, and the University’s capacity on using ICTs for a new teaching-learning process. This analysis was carried out by a questionnaire applied to LAC Universities, complemented with some interviews to officials responsible of Virtual Education programs.
Workpackage:
WP 2: Assessing and Building Research Capacities for the Knowledge Society in EU and LAC
Author(s):
- Ms. Marcela Amaro Rosales
- Mr. Roberto López Martínez
- Mr. Jordy Micheli Thirión
- Mr. Daniel Villavicencio Carbajal
Attachments:
| Title | File size |
|---|---|
| Report on EU-LAC comparison of indicators for the knowledge society | 3.44M |
