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Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet (1998)

Chapter: 4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS

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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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4. Indicators of Internet Impacts

This chapter begins by describing a framework, presented in terms of Internet supply and demand, in which a discussion of the impacts of the Internet can be understood. Indicators are then offered to-help analyze possible direct and indirect impacts of the Internet. The indicators are intended as tools, with different indicators useful for different analyses. Thus, a development agency, an investor, or a local policymaker likely would each use different sets of indicators. As noted in the Introduction, the indicators suggested in this report were developed in the African context and in particular based on the committee's field research in Senegal and Ghana and to a lesser extent Kenya. However, the indicators are intended to apply to other countries as well. All of the indicators are presented in tabular format in Appendix C.

FRAMEWORK OF INTERNET SUPPLY AND DEMAND

The supply side refers to the Internet service providers (ISPs) themselves and the services they offer. In Ghana and Senegal there are both commercial providers and nonprofit organizations providing Internet access to individuals and organizations. The supply side also refers to the environment in which ISPs operate. This environment includes governmental policies and regulations, the country's telecommunications infrastructure, and the general environment that affects the offer and use of Internet services, such as economic conditions, level of education and literacy, and population characteristics.

The demand side includes those who use Internet services—for example, individuals and organizations—and the way in which Internet services are used and the factors that affect their use. The demand side also refers to impacts on formal organizations such as schools, government agencies, and private enterprises. Each of these organizations serves other societal goals (e.g., improving the level and quality of education, governance, private-sector development), which in turn can be affected by Internet use by the organizations.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

In very simple terms, the relationship between the supply and demand factors can be shown as:

Environment ↔ Internet ↔ Institutions ↔ Sector Impacts

In this simple relationship, the environment influences the supply and demand of Internet services; those services are used by individuals and institutions, which in turn affect sector development. As more details are considered, the components of the categories noted above and the number of interactions between the categories will increase and become increasingly more complex. For example, Internet suppliers deliver content, which in turn influences the organizations and institutions using the Internet. But impacts also affect the institutions, which look for different content and service supply and then change their use, which in turn infers or requires changes in the environment. Thus, the interactions go in both directions. One suggested model that begins to illustrate the complexity of the components and interactions is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Model of the impacts of the Internet.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

The reader may only be interested in the impacts of the introduction of the Internet at some specific level in this model, such as the business organization or the education sector. This report, however, is suggesting that analytically the reader should consider all of the impacts in the model to the left of the one of interest. Thus, in Africa at this time, it may be helpful to understand the availability of Internet services–the way they are being used (or not used) by individuals, the-ways that organizations are adapting to the Internet, and their success in using the Internet–in order to adequately understand the larger sectoral impacts of the Internet.

INDICATORS RELATED TO THE ENVIRONMENT FOR INTERNET USE

The penetration, use, and impacts of the Internet depend on the environment into which it is introduced. At a minimum, in order to connect with and use the Internet, one needs a computer, a telephone line, and electricity to power them. Lack of access to these fundamentals limits Internet access in many African countries. Obviously, the ability to invest in computers, communications, electricity, and so forth depends in part on a country's wealth and the rate of generation of new wealth. Equally, the ability of a country to introduce and utilize the Internet will depend on the human resources available, including the availability of technically trained people to install, maintain, and manage the technology and the ability of managers and workers to adapt to and utilize the Internet. Similarly, introduction of the Internet and its impacts will depend on the institutions in a country and their capabilities to acquire and utilize the technology. Finally, the path of introduction for the Internet is contingent on the policy environment in the country involved.

Such assertions are essentially truisms. The reality is that many factors combine in complex ways to influence the rate of introduction of the Internet, the rate of Internet use, the rate of adaptation to the opportunities and risks related to introduction of the Internet, and the ultimate impacts of the Internet. Over the past half century a literature has developed on technological innovations and their diffusion in developing countries that should be the basis for

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

analyzing the environmental factors. A summary of this literature is beyond the scope of this report. However, selection and utilization of the indices discussed below should be done in light of a plan of analysis, which in turn is based on a broad understanding of the theories of technological innovations and diffusion and the social impacts of new technologies.

Supportive Economy and Infrastructure

Conventional wisdom suggests that a correlation exists between Internet use and such variables as gross national product (GNP), GNP per capita, and teledensity, or the number of telephones per capita.11 In fact, preliminary research undertaken by the committee shows this to be the case in a set of African countries.12 In other words, the more phones and money a country has, the better and more likely its access to the Internet. It would be expected that there are minimum and maximum levels of GNP and GNP per capita at which that relationship holds. Moreover, a more complex picture is likely to emerge if one considers more variables, such as variations of Internet connectivity (full Internet protocol, or IP, dial-in access, store and forward only). However, for the purposes of this report, it is assumed that an individual's or a country's access to the Internet will be impacted by these and other variables. The relevant indicators for a supportive economy and infrastructure then include:

  • GNP per capita

  • number of telephones

  • number of telephones per capita

  • indicators of penetration of telephone service in rural areas

  • indicators of penetration of electrical power in rural areas

  • density of population in rural areas

  • percentage of population in urban areas

11  

Of course, telecommunications policies and other such country-specific conditions that impact Internet use directly must be taken into account.

12  

The committee used data from Jensen on Internet connections, store and forward capability, and dial-in access and the CIA web site. http://www3.wn.apc.org/africa/

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×
  • indicators of the strength of markets for personal computers, modems, and related technologies

Policy and Regulatory Environment

A supportive role for a country's government is to advocate and provide an open and competitive policy and market environment, ensuring that there are multiple connections to the international information highway as well as opportunities for intranets in the country.13 Taxes and tariffs on imported equipment and other goods and services can assist or be a significant disincentive to Internet use and growth. In the countries visited by the committee in Africa, the governments can be described as passive with regard to the Internet, only sometimes initiating reforms. While no formal barriers to market entry exist, some problems were cited by Senegalese ISPs with regard to laws and rules governing Internet supply and use. There is little aggressive leadership in the government to push liberalization of laws and regulations. A common view of the local Post, Telephone and Telegraph (PTT) administration seems to be that by controlling Internet service it will increase its control of the infrastructure and be able to control all of the profits. The Ghanaian government has liberalized telecommunications policy some, but more remains to be done for it to be considered truly supportive. In Ghana and Senegal, only now are a few government officials beginning to use the Internet themselves. Representatives from the Ghanaian government recognize the need for an overall policy framework for communications policies, but the ministries have done little to date in terms of developing or implementing any such framework, whether because of other priorities or lack of expertise.

As noted above, the overall telecommunications infrastructure in Africa is relatively poor. In Ghana, problems include the absence of routing between ISPs and the resulting inefficiencies and lack of or poor-quality telephone lines. One ISP reported significant improvements in service

13  

Government policy that ultimately will impact Internet use also extends to social and political issues, including the level of democracy and pluralism, interest for an international role, and commitment to education and research. Such complementary indicators, however, are not addressed in detail in this report.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

in the past year, with waiting time for phone lines having decreased noticeably. Some relevant indicators of a supportive policy and regulatory environment are:

  • estimated cost, time, and rate of success in establishing an ISP

  • estimated cost, time, and rate of success in establishing an ISP account

  • nondiscriminatory access to Internet service

  • modem and/or computer tariff

  • waiting time for a telephone line

  • cost for installation of a telephone line

  • waiting time for a leased line

  • cost per minute to access points of presence (POPs)

  • commercial availability of modems and computers

  • local service for modems and computers

INDICATORS OF INTERNET SUPPLY

ISPs connect individual users to a national backbone or multiple backbones, which in turn connect to other backbones globally. An ISP can be considered an “onramp” to the Internet. ISPs can be commercial profit-seeking organizations or organizations providing Internet access to a limited target constituency, such as universities that provide access to students, staff, and alumni or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that provide access to their members and member organizations. In some countries, universities or NGOs may start Internet access for the public on a nonprofit basis and then reduce their services as other, usually for-profit, ISPs come into the market. 14 As user sophistication and the availability of Internet applications increase, ISPs are offering more content-providing services, such as Web hosting, development and design, and electronic commerce.

14  

Unless explicitly noted otherwise, the term ISP in this report refers to any organization providing Internet access and/or other Internet-related technologies and applications.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

ISPs in Senegal and Ghana range in size and operation from Telecom Plus and Africa Online, each with approximately 1,000 subscribers, to constituency-based providers such as ENDA, an NGO in Senegal that provides Internet access to other NGOs and has approximately 100 subscribers. As noted earlier, the total number of ISPs providing full access as of August 1997 in Senegal and Ghana was nine and three, respectively. Some are looking beyond electronic mail to offering-other Internet-based services. To date, Internet access in Senegal and Ghana is limited primarily to the capital cities, though several ISPs in each country reported plans to expand to other cities.

Quantity of Internet Service

The quantity of Internet service supplied within a country, and the area reached by ISPs, can be measured using basic indicators such as the:

  • total number of ISPs

  • total bandwidth to outside country (kilobytes/second)

  • total number of modems connected to ISP servers for dial-up access

  • total number of leased lines to customers

  • total number of points of presence (POPs)

  • total number of secondary-city POPs

  • percentage of population within local calling area of POP

Quality of Internet Service

The quality of Internet service that is offered can be measured by such indicators as the15:

  • percentage of send failures (messages that fail to reach their destination)

15  

Adapted from the Inverse Corporation e-mail site: http://www.inversenet.com/products/email.html.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×
  • average delivery time of e-mail/data transfer from each ISP to every ISP

  • average delivery time of messages

  • average time to check an empty mailbox

  • mean connect speed of subscribers

  • call failure rates for ISPs (the percentage of calls that fail to connect to the Web)

Indicators can of course include further derivatives of these indicators, such as the rate of change of the number of modems connected to ISP servers or acceleration (second derivative) of the average time to check an empty mailbox.

The number of ISPs in a country and the degree of competitiveness in the ISP market are important indicators of the likelihood of fair pricing and quality service.16 In Senegal, for example, there are few formal barriers to new ISPs entering the market, and competition has helped reduce monthly access prices for simple telephone call-up service to 10,000 Francs (approximately $20) from twice that or more.17 But at the same time, small ISPs complain about policies that they think limit true competition. ISPs and related organizations may benefit from working together to influence government policies and regulations. The potential impact of such organizations suggests another indicator:

  • number of members in an information industry association or ISP association

A related issue is the profitability of ISPs and the degree to which they are able and willing to invest earnings in expansion. With a few exceptions, the provision of Internet services in Africa, as in the United States, is not yet profitable or financially viable. In the United States this is largely due to the unusual expansion of Internet use and a rush for market share, which results

16  

Jensen also uses the number of ISPs competing with each other as an important indicator of the maturity of the ISP sector and notes that most African capitals with Internet access have more than one ISP, and 11 countries have particularly active and mature markets (Jensen, op.cit.)

17  

According to Souleymane Sall, Sonatel was forced to lower its prices after he and other ISPs reduced theirs to 10,000 Francs.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

in high expenses for ISPs. In a more “normal” or developed industry not expanding so rapidly, many companies would likely be posting profits. In Ghana and Senegal, relatively high telecommunications costs and small markets have resulted in high access charges (relative to GNP per capita or to average monthly salaries) compared to Western countries. In this situation, ISPs reported financing their Internet operations through other business activities, such as computer hardware or other telecommunications services. As one individual noted to the committee, “It's a losing business. ” But clearly the organizations and businesses that are providing Internet services are doing so in the expectation of future profitability.

It is clear that any analysis of the competitiveness of an ISP market should reflect the unique situation in African countries. An analysis is nonetheless important, and suggested indicators include the:

  • number of ISPs offering full Internet service

  • percentage of nonprofit ISPs

  • number and percentage of profitable ISPs

  • prices charged by ISPs for Internet access

  • total funds invested by ISPs in expansion

  • total ISP revenue

Sustainability

In addition to financial indicators, such as the cost of Internet service to providers and consumers or the profits to providers, there are more general economic considerations. It seems likely that the cost per user to provide services in Africa may be reduced as networks become more densely populated. Similarly, the benefits per consumer will likely increase as the number of users in the network increases. One may also suggest that the Internet will result in positive and negative externalities—benefits and costs that will not be appropriated by, or fall on, Internet

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

providers or users. Firms obtaining new business through the Internet may create jobs in suppliers, and competing communications technologies may lose business.

Thus, there is a need for economic indicators that go beyond those directly associated with costs and profits for providers and users. For example, analysts may wish to look at the subsidy flow that will be required to sustainably institutionalize the Internet in African countries. Unfortunately, the complexity of the system makes it very unlikely that models providing such indicators will be affordable or accurate. Still, it may be useful to record the estimates of experts on the amounts needed and the duration required for such subsidies.

Related to the issue of having a supportive environment for Internet use is the notion that merely importing a technology without developing the skills to sustain, tailor, and expand it, particularly when the technology is changing rapidly globally, is of limited benefit to a country. Therefore, the degree of indigenous skill and competency in all aspects of the Internet is one of many indicators for sustainability of the Internet and thus for its potential to affect a particular country.

One limiting factor on ISP expansion in Africa is the lack of technical capacity and human resources. Most ISPs in Ghana and Senegal reported to the committee that finding and retaining qualified technical staff is a significant problem. In Kenya this is a particular problem for the public sector because it cannot compete with private-sector salaries. This situation, too, complicates measures of competition because companies that might otherwise be making a profit, investing that profit, expanding and growing, and thereby contributing to the industry 's expansion and growth, are instead not seeking to expand.

For ISPs in Ghana and Senegal the primary source of technical skills, to date, has been the West. In Ghana one of the largest commercial ISPs is Africa Online, a subsidiary of U.S.-based Prodigy, Inc. In Senegal many of the small ISPs operating alongside Telecom-Plus, the Internet arm of the national PTT, are owned by expatriates or recent immigrants. The number of

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

foreign-owned or -operated ISPs is not intrinsically good or bad. The issue is whether skills are being transferred to the local population, a more difficult measurement to make. It is reflected in part in the sophistication of Internet use and the degree to which the Internet is used for increasingly advanced applications.

Relevant indicators include the:

  • number of foreign- and domestic-owned ISPs

  • number of local technical staff

  • number of ISPs offering user training

  • number of institutions that monitor their own traffic, use, and number of hits on pages

  • average number of years of schooling of adult population

  • literacy rate

  • number of information technology courses offered in universities

  • average salary of Web designers and other ISP employees

Related to the issue of development of indigenous skills is the development of indigenous information sources in the form of Web pages, databases, news sources, electronic commerce hosting, and others. These more sophisticated applications generally involve two-way transfers of information and content and thus allow an individual or organization to be a provider, not just a consumer, of information, goods, and services. Measurements of participation and skills in specific applications will show the extent to which an individual, organization, or country participates or hopes to participate in the target activity of that application, an example being the:

  • percentage of ISPs offering Web hosting, Web design, and other services

The amount of indigenous content developed in a developing country, and the degree to which that indigenous content is used domestically, regionally, and internationally, can be shown by the:

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×
  • ratio of national, regional, and international traffic to total traffic (both coming into and going out of the country)

  • number of home pages on domestic servers

  • ratio of national, regional, and international participation in listserves and news groups

INDICATORS OF INTERNET USE

A typical measure of the quantity of Internet use is the number of users and the number of subscribers and any change in those numbers. But these numbers can lead to a false picture of Internet use if not qualified. For example, several hundred computers may have Internet access through a local-area network (LAN), or a single ISP subscriber may be several computers with several users who take turns connecting through each computer. A news agency that connects to newspapers and radio and television stations through the Internet may get news to vast numbers of individuals. Thus, as elsewhere, the number of users in Africa is expected to be larger than the number of personal computers with access to the Internet, and the number of PCs is expected to be larger than the number of ISP subscribers.

According to The World Information Report18:

[Use of] the Internet is often divided into three classes, a trichotomy first proposed by Matrix Information and Directory Services (1994): the Core Internet, consisting of those who can provide or distribute information over the Internet, the Consumer Internet, consisting of people who can receive information over the Internet, and the Matrix, consisting of users with access to electronic mail systems who can exchange mail with Internet users, including most proprietary, corporate e-mail systems.

18  

Blaise Cronin and Geoffrey McKim, 1997, “The Internet,” Chapter 18 in The World Information Report, UNESCO, http://www.unesco.org/webworld/wirerpt/wirenglish/chap18.pdf.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

Exemplifying the division of users into different classes, it was estimated19 that in the United States in mid-1996, 28 million people over the age of 16 had access to the Internet, 16.4 million people used the Internet, 11.5 million people used the World Wide Web, and 1.51 million people have used the Web to purchase something.

In Africa a finer division of “users” may be necessary. Interviews by the committee in Senegal, Ghana, and Kenya suggested that there may be hundreds of people who access electronic mail by traveling physically to a facility (school or university, information center, cybercafe, business center, etc.) and picking up paper copies of incoming messages and leaving paper copies of messages to be sent out. ISPs in Africa may have several distinct levels of use, each with a specific tariff structure. If data are to be useful analytically, categories of users will have to be disaggregated sufficiently so that there is less diversity within categories than between them.

An accurate measure of a user base must include the:

  • total number of subscribers by category of user

  • average number of workstations per subscriber

  • average number of people with access per workstation

Simple derivatives of the number of users–the change and rate of change in the number of Internet subscribers –are basic, yet important, indicators of the technology's current and potential impacts. In very simplistic terms, individuals and organizations pay for what they believe to be financially or otherwise beneficial to themselves and their organizations. The more subscribers there are, the more important the technology can be considered. In Senegal, according to some ISPs interviewed by the committee, the Internet subscriber base was estimated at 2,000 in August 1997 and growing at a rate of approximately 10 percent per year. As noted in the background

19  

Donna L. Hoffman, William D. Kalsbeek, and Thomas P. Novak, 1996, “Internet and Web Use in the United States: Baselines for Commercial Development,” Project 2000 Working Paper, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University. http://www2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu/papers/internet_demos_july9_1996.html .

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

section on Senegal above, that rate is likely to fluctuate significantly. In fact, one ISP reported 15 and 20 new subscribers in June and July, respectively; Telecom-Plus claimed 50 new subscribers per month. It also may be useful not only to measure the gross rate of change but also to take into account the rate of turnover, or the number of subscribers who cancel their subscriptions. Thus, the relevant indicators are the:

  • rate of change in the number of subscribers

  • turnover rate

Related to the rate of change of the user base and the rate of change in total Internet use is the change in use reliance by subscribers. Changes in reliance on the Internet versus other communications tools and information technologies and increased value found in the Internet will be reflected in increased time spent using it. Of course, a direct relationship cannot be assumed, as time may be spent “surfing ” or traffic may include graphics, pictures, or other files that use many kilobytes but contain relatively little information. However, value found in the Internet can be measured to a degree with the following indicators:

  • total traffic (kilobytes per day)

  • total connect time per day

  • total number of e-mails per day

  • average subscriber connect time

  • average subscriber connections per day

  • number of subscribers using leased lines

It is also possible to develop quantitative indicators of what the Internet is used for. Surveys20 have estimated Internet use for:

  • communication

20  

Ibid.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×
  • downloading software

  • interactive discussions

  • noninteractive discussions

  • use of another computer

  • real-time audio or video

and for:

  • searches for product/service information

  • purchases based on Web information

  • searches for company/organization information

  • searches for other information on the Web

  • browsing/exploring

  • seeing what is new at a favorite Web site

  • business purposes

As noted above, interviews in Africa indicate that, to date, the Internet is often equated with electronic mail and considered an alternative means of long-distance communications. Respondents in a recent study reported that two-thirds or more of their messages are sent outside Africa.21 That same study asked respondents in Senegal to classify the purposes for their use of electronic communications, under such categories as personal messages, exchange of ideas, providing or receiving technical advice, arranging meetings, managing projects, and computer conferences. Similarly, survey data have been used22 to estimate the number of Internet and Web users according to intensity of use: high users, low users, and nonusers.

21  

Michel J. Menou (ed.), 1993, Measuring the Impact of Information on Development, International Development Research Center, Ottawa.

22  

Hoffman et al., op.cit.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

Another helpful measure related to types of Internet use is the point of access location, for which indicators include the:

  • percentage of users who connect from their own homes

  • percentage of users who connect from an office

  • percentage of users who connect from both home and office

  • percentage of users who connect from an Internet cafe or business center

Costs of Internet Use

The costs of Internet access, and the cost variances within a country, while not impacts themselves are an important issue in evaluating Internet supply and demand. General economic knowledge would suggest that the lower the cost of Internet services, the higher the usage would be, all other things being equal, and, by extrapolation, the greater the impacts. What does one include in a cost estimate? The answer may not be as easy as expected. Costs can be divided into several categories, including fees paid to an ISP for access, fees paid to a telephone company, hardware and software necessary to access and utilize the Internet, and staff and personnel costs and other organizational costs necessary in an organization to enable people to use the Internet well.

The prices charged by ISPs for Internet access depend on many factors, including, as mentioned earlier, the competitiveness in the ISP market, the country's GNP or general economic environment, and other telecommunications costs. But to the degree that price influences demand, a more important issue may be the price of a telephone call to dial the service provider, as this can be a major cost in many countries and a barrier for much of the population to gain access to the Internet, particularly when local calls are billed on a per-minute basis in addition to monthly line charges. An individual at the University of Ghana, for example, noted to the committee that the cost of a local phone call is 6 million cedis per month (approximately $3,000)

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

for 100 people to work one hour per week on the Internet. When people get the phone bill, the university official fears, they will be disillusioned with the technology.

In developing countries, international calls may be required from many locations to reach the nearest ISP, and international rates must be paid. For small enterprises that simply use a modem and connect to a local provider through an existing phone line, there may be no additional telephone cost for Internet connectivity. On the other hand, in countries with inadequate telephone services, enterprises that require new telephone lines to connect to the Internet may find the cost of telephone service exceeds that of the ISP. Where high-capacity lines are required, total costs may be quite significant.

Determining hardware and software costs also is difficult. In developed countries, connection to the Internet is generally accomplished using hardware and software that is available but underutilized and thus is accomplished with minimal marginal cost. In developing countries, because the Internet may be the initial use of the equipment, the hardware and software costs allocated to Internet use are likely to be relatively high.

Finally, staff and organizational costs resulting from restructuring are difficult to determine. Often, because optimists assume that the Internet increases efficiency, staff costs such as training are generally ignored. There is, however, an investment needed for a person to be able to use the Internet efficiently and effectively, and this cost at least should be considered. Also, in larger organizations there will be a need for personnel to maintain local-area networks and software and otherwise service the facilities through which the Internet is accessed. In addition, enterprises are increasingly contracting for services such as Web page development, and such services should be treated as Internet-related costs.

Descriptive research is needed to identify the range of such costs for a developing country's organizations using the Internet, since such information is needed in terms of policy to make the Internet more affordable. Some suggested indicators include the:

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×
  • price elasticity of demand

  • fees paid to an ISP for leased-line, dial-up service, and other services

  • installation fee(s)

  • fees (fixed and/or usage dependent) paid to the telephone company

  • price of a phone call per minute to connect with the ISP

  • costs to the organization of Internet training courses and staff salaries paid during training

Quality of Internet Use

In many countries there is concern about the quality of Internet use, which will determine to a degree the impacts the Internet may have. Users are largely self-taught and tend to gain facility over time by using trial-and-error methods. Problems with effective use of the Internet can be quite basic, such as lack of basic literacy or typing skills that limit even the use of electronic mail. Given that much of the content of the World Wide Web is in English (and, to a lesser degree, Spanish, French, German, and Japanese), lack of fluency can also limit a user's quality of Internet use. The ability to search the Internet to find information that is needed efficiently and effectively is perhaps the most frequently discussed element regarding the quality of use. This ability involves an understanding of various search engines and their advantages and limitations, as well as an ability to use the hypertext aspects of the World Wide Web effectively. One research project,23 for example, has estimated the ability of U.S. users to navigate the Web, classifying them as “very skilled” and those for whom navigating the Web is “very challenging.” Comparable indicators can be derived to measure the effectiveness of Internet use by African users.

In Africa, where the costs of Internet use are relatively high compared to personal incomes and where access to computers linked to the Internet is limited, the ability to use the Internet

23  

Ibid.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

efficiently is especially important. However, in Africa one may expect users to have less experience with other information tools, compared with people in the United States where libraries have been equipped with on-line search engines for years. Interviews by committee members in Ghana and Senegal indicated that there was considerable concern about the quality of use of the Internet and the lack of training and experience of users.

One possible source of indicators of the quality of Internet use in Africa would be from help desks.24 A help desk is a service that provides (usually on-line) assistance to Internet users in how to fulfill specific information demands quickly and effectively. Help desks have been supported by donors, governments, professional associations, and other groups. As a result of their close daily contact with Internet users, their staff may provide useful qualitative data and their records useful quantitative data on quality of use.

INDICATORS OF INTERNET CONTENT

As noted in the Introduction, this report focuses primarily on the impacts of the Internet as a mechanism itself, not on the content that is contained in Internet communications and data. However, the quantity, quality, and relevance of material on the Internet deserve some discussion, since they determine in large part the degree and types of Internet impacts. There is room for concern about the content of electronic mail transmitted through the Internet, as when corporations and government agencies are concerned with personal use of electronic mail facilities by employees and its possible deleterious effect on productivity or costs. More importantly, there is considerable interest in Internet commerce, which may be electronic mail mediated and which has given rise to considerable effort to develop appropriate indicators. This section focuses primarily on the content of Web pages.

24  

See, for example, helpdesks provided under the IDRC Unganisha project (http://www.idrc.ca/unganisha) and USAID/AfricaLink (http://www.info.usaid.gov/regions/afr/alnk).

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

With regard to quantity, it has been estimated that as of August 1997 there were 180 million Web pages on the Internet.25 However, many Web users in Africa and in the West have commented on the dearth of information generated in Africa and on the more general lack of distribution of scientific, technological, and other information produced in Africa. Scientists and others have hoped that using the Internet would make it possible to counteract this general deficiency and make scientific and other data more generally available in the countries of origin and regionally in Africa. In counting Web pages in Africa, search engines and software agents can play a critical role. It will be important to categorize Web pages to obtain meaningful indicators, differentiating by language, purpose (governmental, commercial, scientific, etc.), subject matter (agriculture, health, education, etc.), and other criteria.

With regard to quality, users in developing countries are already complaining (as are users in developed countries) that in using the Internet they often find more information than they can easily digest and that much of that it is of dubious quality. There are public policy reasons for which countries would seek to make and implement policies to restrict material they find morally or ethically unacceptable from being placed on or transmitted over the Internet, such as sexually explicit materials or materials that might exacerbate ethnic or racial tensions. Other countries may wish to make policies on the language of postings on the Internet. For such purposes it is, in principle, possible to construct indicators of the degree to which Web pages appear likely to include objectionable content, and some such indicators now exist. (Of course, using such indicators as tools, quantitative indicators can be created based on estimates of the number of Web pages containing such objectionable content.) The EDSITEment Web site, for example, seeks to provide links to “the best humanities-related educational content on the Internet.”26 To do so, it asks people to classify candidate Web sites according to:

  • intellectual quality, or the quality of the material posted on the Web

  • user friendliness, or the ease of use and visual attractiveness of a site

25  

The IDC Web Index, November 1997, http://www.idcresearch.com/f/idcf.htm.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×
  • user impact, or the ability of a site to serve multiple audiences

Conceptually, it would be possible to assign an ordinal scale to each such criterion, with values for not acceptable, poor, average, good, and excellent. This example comes from the education sector and suggests that it would be equally possible to qualify sites for a wide variety of educational purposes. Similarly, without doubt the approach could be generalized to other sectors, and sites could be categorized according to quality in terms of private-sector development and/or democratization and civil society.

Finally, with regard to relevance, it is possible for a Web site to provide large quantities of information of high quality but still be of little relevance to Africa. Comparably, it is possible for a Web site to be very relevant to health care practitioners but of little relevance to educators or business people. Consequently it may be useful to develop indicators of relevance of the content of the Internet by sector, country, region and other categories.

One possible use of the Internet is control of computers and automata at a distance. In some situations, networks of personal computers have been used in off hours by researchers to do complex calculations, such as those needed for factoring large numbers; in other situations, supercomputers have been controlled via programs or instructions sent over the Internet. The degree to which Africans are using the Internet to enhance the very limited computing power on the continent through the use of computers abroad is certainly worthy of investigation, and indicators could be developed fairly easily of the amount of computer power and the time of use of that power through the Internet. While these would not be “content” indicators as normally construed, the amount of computational depth underlying certain classes of Internet communication is indeed a measure of content. Thus, a weather prediction sent via e-mail has more content if it is the result of several hours of analysis by a supercomputer based on large amounts of remote sensing data than if it is the result of a simple guess.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

INDICATORS OF IMPACTS ON FORMAL ORGANIZATIONS

This section begins with an introduction to what is meant by formal organizations and then proceeds to a discussion of indicators of the benefits of Internet use, types of uses within an organization, and impacts on specific functions and organizational decisionmaking.

Formal organizations include businesses, government agencies, private voluntary organizations, health care organizations that run hospitals and health care centers, educational organizations that run schools and universities, and so forth. Formal organizations lend themselves to the study of the organizational impacts of the Internet because of their more hierarchical structure and their more defined division of responsibilities. It is likely that in a formal organization a designated individual can be found to answer questions about the impacts of the Internet on the organization as a whole. Formal organizations are, in these respects, different from other institutions such as markets and communities, which lack this higher sense of formal structure, delegation, or spokespersons.

Perceived Benefits of the Internet

Diffusion of the technology, of course, depends on individuals and organizations finding value and an economic benefit in using the Internet. The most commonly stated advantages of the Internet by current users in Dakar, Accra, and Nairobi are time and cost savings on communications and ease of communications with others in the field. Increasing use of the Internet by an organization, decreasing use of other communications means, and cost savings in communications costs are generally considered the most straightforward and obvious impacts of using the Internet. Those and more sophisticated analyses can be made with the following indicators:

  • number of messages/transactions to/from/by an organization per day that are domestic versus regional versus international in source or destination

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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  • reported relative importance of the Internet versus other means

  • cost savings on communications

  • time savings on communications

  • ratio of Internet to other channels in obtaining information

Also important to organizations increasing their access to outside data is that organizations increase dissemination of their information to others. As emphasized above, individuals, organizations, and countries must become information producers, not just consumers. An outward flow of information–for example, information about products, valuable scientific data–will help ensure that a country can becomes a leader in the information economy. Indicators in this regard include:

  • percentage of an institution's dissemination through the Internet

  • percentage of total public information made available through the Internet

  • number of Web server hits or requests fulfilled per month from domestic versus regional versus international sources

  • number of electronic newsletters or bulletins produced

  • number of subscribers to newsletters and/or bulletins

The likely impacts that the Internet will have on the operations of any given organization are a function of how that organization and the individuals within it use the Internet and the importance they place on it. The pattern of Internet use in an organization, not merely the quantity of use, is important. For example, the types of impacts in an organization will differ according to whether users within that organization are part of an LAN or have individual stations and access to the Internet. In Africa it is likely that, at present, there is little transfer of benefits to the organizational level because individual use is more common than group use and there is little sharing within organizations.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

Further, in general, there is likely to be a progression of Internet use: e-mail is the first use, surfing is the next, the design and use of a home page is third, and then the development of an intranet. Several indicators may be useful in this respect:

  • number and percentage of people trained in using the Internet

  • number and percentage of subscribers with a LAN

  • number of top/middle/lower-level users in an organization with access to the Internet

  • relative importance placed on the Internet by top/middle/lower-level staff

  • number of networks and "virtual organizations" of which an institution is a member

  • investments in computer and other telecommunications facilities

  • approximate number of users who (1) use e-mail, (2) "surf," (3) maintain own (individual or organization) home page, and (4) use an Intranet

  • presence of a distinct information strategy as part of an organization 's overall organizational strategies and plans

Organizations are likely to change structure, linkages, and processes because of the Internet, and such changes can be measured as impacts of its introduction. Thus, it has been suggested that organizations using Internet technology are becoming flatter and less hierarchical. Processes such as “just-in-time manufacturing,” electronic commerce, and interfirm collaboration on product design are facilitated by Internet communications technology and are likely impacts of that technology (at least in technologically advanced countries). Similarly, it has been suggested that firms are tending to downsize and out-source more in advanced technological countries, substituting interfirm linkages for intrafirm linkages in part because of the improved interfirm communication made possible through Internet technology. While such changes may be hard to measure quantitatively, it would be possible to develop indicators to discern such changes in at least larger organizations and perhaps smaller organizations, for example, by noting changes to the organizational chart, the abolishment of existing positions, and the establishment of new positions (e.g., chief information officer or its equivalent.) This is especially important, as most

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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studies show that organizations cannot capture substantive efficiencies from information technologies unless they are willing to make serious structural and staffing changes.

Higher-level impacts can be sought, such as the utility of the Internet in carrying out the functions of an organization. In business, for example, one study27 of Internet applications in productive enterprises focused on applications in:

  • production and operation

  • marketing

  • finance

  • accounting

  • human resources management

A recent study by the International Finance Corporation28 used ordinal values to ask users if the Internet had been not useful, slightly useful, useful, very useful, or indispensable in carrying out specific functions and how useful it would be in these functions within a year. A similar approach has been used to study Internet use by financial services firms in carrying out the functions of:

  • advertising and public relations

  • on-line customer services

  • on-line financial transactions

  • on-lines tools (e.g. credit assessment)

  • human resources management

27  

Élisabeth Lefebvre and Louis A. Lefebvre, Information and Telecommunication Technologies: The Impact of Their Adoption on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, 1996, Canada's International Development Research Centre, 1996, http://www.idrc.ca/books/focus/807/.

28  

John A. Daly and Robert Miller, 1998, “Internet Use in Developing Countries,” the International Finance Corporation.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

Such an approach can obviously be extended to other kinds of organizations. Thus, one can identify key functions of education and governmental organizations as well as NGOs and develop indicators relevant to the impacts of the Internet on those functions. To use such an approach, it is critical that organizations be disaggregated so that those within a specific class are comparably dependent on the same functions for their overall success. Thus, one might not be able to classify educational organizations into a single group but would be likely to have higher-educational organizations that are separate from general secondary schools, organizations specializing in nonformal education, trade schools, and so forth.

Of course, the availability of the Internet to the rest of society must be taken into account. That is, African NGOs cannot easily communicate with clients and members unless they have similar communications technologies.

Organizational Decision Making

One view of decisionmaking within an organization is as a network, with people and their available information technologies (books, files, etc.) corresponding to the nodes and their channels of communication as the linkages among nodes. With the introduction of the Internet and other information technologies, one can consider that the node is the individual augmented by more complex information technologies, including his or her personal computer and the linkages to include electronic communications lines as well as phones, faxes, and the more traditional channels for verbal and written communication. Introduction of the Internet can improve the calculating power of each individual decisionmaker, the speed of access to data and the amount of data that can be accessed, and the rate of communication among people in a network. By embodying decision rules or decision support within hardware and software, the decision processes can be improved or at least made more nearly standard and predictable. Examples of relevant indicators are:

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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  • change in number of people involved in an institution's decisionmaking

  • relative importance of the Internet versus other means of gathering data and information in decisionmaking

The extent to which the decisionmaking process in an office is made more or less inclusive, or hierarchical, as a result of the Internet depends, of course, on the number and types of employees who have access to the technology. A focus on the use of the Internet by different categories of employees (upper-management, middle-management, foremen, etc.) would help to illuminate the impacts of the Internet on organizational decisionmaking.

Ultimately, people will be interested in the impacts of the introduction of the Internet on the overall performance of organizations. Are firms becoming more profitable, better able to serve their customers with high-quality goods and services produced at low cost, more able to adapt to changing markets and environments and protect the interests of their owners and employees? Are schools better able to help students to learn, to provide educational services of high quality efficiently, to assure the relevance of their curricula to changing social and economic circumstances, and to meet the needs of the community they serve? Are government agencies, political parties and civil society organizations better able to involve citizens in governance, to provide high-quality services to citizens at low cost, to meet the changing needs of their electorates and institutions? Each such question can lead to an indicator of organizational performance. The Committee found exactly these kinds of concerns in their interviews in Senegal, Ghana, and Kenya.

Nonutilization of the Internet in the face of utilization by other organizations may result in a competitive advantage by the latter, as well as negative impacts on the former. Failure to adopt and utilize the Internet may assure that an organization will not benefit from the Internet, but adoption of the technology and relative success in applying it to some functions will not assure that the organization will be notably more successful in achieving its overall objectives. It is the pattern of use and success with the Internet that will determine overall success or failure of an

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

organization in the Internet world. Even where indicators of the overall success of organizations are available, such indicators for a large organization will be sensitive to a wide range of causal variables—the overall state of the economy, the quality and morale of the staff, the overall policies of the organizational leadership. Thus, the problem of finding an indicator of the impacts of the Internet on the overall objectives of large organizations becomes methodologically complex. In general, one will seek qualitative or proxy indicators at this analytical level, such as the consensus opinion of a panel of experts. There exists a considerable literature and body of experience on how to organize such panels and create such indicators for different types of organizations; the existing theories and methodologies could, and should, be further developed to apply to the relationship of Internet use with an organization's effectiveness or success.

OTHER INSTITUTIONS

There are many kinds of institutions. The previous section dealt with formal organizations. Another–the market–is discussed in a subsequent section on the private sector. All societies, however, include many other cultural, social, economic, political, and religious institutions. Critically important to all these institutions are their underlying communications and information networks. Thus, as Internet use in Africa results in institutionalization of new communications and information links, it changes the information and communications networks underlying a wide variety of institutions. This change in information and communications networks may induce other important changes in the institutions themselves. Indeed, many of the most important impacts of the Internet in Africa may occur in the cultural, social, religious, and other institutions which are neither formal organizations nor markets. (ISPs in Africa reported that many subscribers were people who used the Internet to communicate with family members abroad. Thus even so basic an institution as the family is affected by the Internet.)

Some generalizations about indicators may be possible. Indicators of the geographic dispersal of people affiliated with an institution and the relative authority of information and analysis sources may be useful, and gradients in institutional affiliation with income and education

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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may be examined as secondary impacts of the Internet. That is, as the Internet relieves geographic constraints to communication, one may expect people to participate in institutions that are more geographically dispersed. And as people find new sources of information and analysis available over the Internet that are superior to local sources, the authority attributed to those traditional local sources and institutions may diminish. Also, as richer and more educated people have more access to the Internet, and to the extent access to the Internet leads to changes in relative affiliation to distant or disperse institutions, so then the introduction of the Internet may add to class differences in institutional affiliations.

However, it seems likely that appropriate indicators of the impacts of introduction of the Internet will usually depend on the specific nature of the institutions in question. It is beyond the scope of this report to seek to inventory every institution in Africa and to define every appropriate indicator for each institution. The general approach used throughout this report seems widely applicable–that is, measuring the penetration of the Internet into the group of people involved with the institution, seeking indicators of direct effects of this penetration, and then seeking indicators of indirect effects on the institution.

INDICATORS OF SECTORAL IMPACTS

The preceding sections considered indicators of Internet impacts related to the supply and use of the Internet by individuals and institutions; this section takes the discussion up one level to sectors and sectoral goals. First, the diffusion of the Internet among sectors is considered. The discussion then proceeds to impacts of the Internet on certain sectors and on the developmental goals associated with those sectors.

Sectoral Use and Diffusion of the Internet

If one considers the Internet as a tool (and outcome) of development, perhaps the largest challenge faced by ISPs, governments, and others –but of crucial importance if the Internet is to

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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help move the developing countries into the information economy–is to ensure that the Internet reaches a diverse user base, an indigenous user base, and that it is used for development purposes. All sectors of the population, including schools, universities, libraries, and small organizations, not just the rich businesses, must have access.

Related to the question of which sectors are using the Internet is that of sectoral flow. That is, which sectors, if any, seem to dominate and propel the Internet? While electronic mail and the Internet originated in the United States with the Department of Defense, the academic sector has played a large role in its diffusion. Private-sector use has followed, and recently individual use has skyrocketed. But in Africa, in the countries visited, the committee found that Internet diffusion has been driven largely by the private sector, foreign companies, and development organizations. NGOs have played a smaller but significant role. The academic sector was among the earliest users of FIDOnet and other precursors of the Internet, and in some cases university computer centers have played a key role in obtaining and maintaining access to the Internet. However, in the African countries it visited, the committee found that the academic sector has had limited influence, with universities still struggling to gain access. The government has had little influence in promoting diffusion of the Internet, either passively allowing it to develop or, in some cases, taking an active role to control and restrict it; and there is very little individual use. Individual use is far less common than organizational and institutional uses, largely because many individuals lack the capital for a telephone line and computer.

More so than in the United States, the Internet in Africa seems to develop only within sectors where visionary leadership emerges–in the NGO community, private sector, or government (less so). In Ghana and Senegal, in each sector, identifiable individuals have pushed to move the technology into acceptance and use. These individuals are then in a position to (1) create new institutions, such as the Ghana Internet Society; (2) lead, restructure, and invigorate existing institutions, such as the Ecole Polytechnique in Senegal; and (3) gain public attention, for example through the press, which leads to public education.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Some of this difference can, of course, be explained by economic differences, as discussed more in other sections, but there are nonetheless different forces pushing Internet use. The relevant indicators in the study of Internet diffusion are:

  • total number of subscribers per sector

  • increase in the number of subscribers per sector

  • percentage of Internet use per sector for (1) e-mail, (2) "surfing," (3) maintaining a (individual or organization) home page, and (4) use of an Intranet

In addition to reaching all sectors, for the Internet to be fully effective it will have to reach rural areas. To date, globally and in Africa the Internet is largely an urban technology. This is a particular challenge in Africa, where countries like Ghana are predominantly agricultural and rural communities have minimal or no access to the technology. Some efforts are under way in this respect. For example, in Senegal, in a project partially funded by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the nongovernmental organization Conseil National de Concertation et de Cooperation des Ruraux is planning to link radios in rural areas via Internet to help provide market information to farmers and fishermen. The relevant indicator here is the:

  • number of subscribers in primary city and secondary cities

INTERNET IMPACTS ON SECTORS AND THEIR RELATED DEVELOPMENT GOALS

A sector is composed of formal organizations, markets, and other institutions. For example, the education sector is composed of schools, training facilities, and teachers and students. It also involves markets for the labor of educators and for educational supplies such as books and professional associations for education professionals. The Internet can impact the organizations and institutions in the education sector as, for example, when teachers use it to enrich their curricula and increase student participation in classroom activities or when teachers,

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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colleges, and schools use it to improve the recruitment and placement of new graduates as teachers.

There also exist broader developmental goals associated with sectors. The Internet, and through it networking information gathering, and information sharing, is a tool for supporting initiatives that can improve and further these development goals. For example, for isolated countries and communities, Internet access can permit increased communication and interaction with the international community and thereby facilitate technological and economic development. Another common goal of development programs is to increase access to education, health care services, employment opportunities and decisionmaking influence for women. A proven tool in this endeavor is networking. Similarly, the developmental goals associated with the education sector include increased literacy, a more educated populace, and higher national technical competency, which in turn lead to a more productive work force, job creation, capital formation, and a variety of other values.

The committee noted a specific example of how the Internet is supporting broader development goals in Ghana. The Ghana Association of Women Entrepreneurs provides its 250 members in the 10 regions of the country with Internet exposure, links to buyers, training on basic business principles, and other moral support. A project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development's Leland Initiative will provide computers and link the 10 regional chapters in order to increase communication and otherwise assist in its services. On an individual scale, women manufacturers will be better served by the organization and may increase their own activities, income, and influence in local decisionmaking. Ultimately, the networking assistance may help members increase sales and gain exposure overseas, thus potentially increasing exports. However, the committee also found that many of the business associations in both Ghana and Senegal have only recently obtained Internet access and use it rarely.

Importantly, the impacts of the Internet on a particular sector can be seen as an aggregate of the impacts on the components of the sector. However, in so complex a system, impacts may

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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emerge as a result of intended or unintended synergies. Unexpected impacts may emerge as a result of the overall pattern of impacts of the Internet on the components of the sector. Impacts may also result from nonuse of the Internet, as when the competitive position of enterprises in a sector deteriorates with respect to enterprises in other sectors in the same country, or enterprises in the same sector in other countries as a result of their use of the Internet. Similarly, impacts may be positive, reflected in enhanced performance of the sector as judged against its goals, or negative, as reflected in deteriorating performance.

It has been suggested, in fact, that one of the most important functions for government and international donor agencies in dealing with the Internet is to analyze the overall sectoral pattern of penetration and utilization of the Internet and to intervene with policies, subsidies, regulations, and demonstrations that will improve the overall impacts of the Internet on sector performance.29 For such purposes it will be difficult to develop definitive indicators. Indicators would have to not only identify changes in the overall performance of the sector but would also have to do so in such as way as to establish that they were results of causes stemming from introduction of the Internet.30 This report again suggests the utility for such purposes of qualitative indicators, based on the judgment of experts provided with comprehensive information about the sector.

In the following three sections, impact indicators are suggested for three sectors–education, the private sector, and government and civil society. The impacts on the developmental goals central to the sectors–that is, wider access to, and better, education; private

29  

Such a suggestion was made by Rainer Lotz of the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development on the occasion of the presentation of initial research for this report in Toronto. The committee apologizes to Dr. Lotz for any misrepresentation of his position in this necessarily short summary.

30  

In a related study of path analysis, researchers developed a mathematical model to indicate for each set of input variables their relative importance in accounting for variations in a set of output or impact variables. They used as a case study the impact of information on small businesses in Shanghai (“Using LISREL to Measure the Impact of Information on Development: London Site Pilot Study,” 1995, in Making a Difference. Measuring the Impact of Information on Development: Proceedings of a Workshop, edited by Paul McConnell, Ottawa.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

sector development; and democratization and civil society development –are also discussed. The report contains no judgment on the appropriateness of the developmental goals themselves. That is, the potential impacts of the Internet on the development goals are considered but not the development goals themselves.

Education
Sectoral Goals

With the proper skills, technical support, and financial resources, the Internet can become a catalyst for important changes at schools and universities. In terms of sectoral goals, one would want to measure the impacts on students, schools, and educators and the extent to which the Internet improves the learning environment, enriches curricula, and expands access to education. For example, a major contribution of the Internet is the availability of learning and teaching material through digital libraries and networked learner support services. Relevant indicators would include the:

  • number of schools/universities with Internet access

  • number of students with Internet access

  • average time of student access

  • number of teachers with Internet access

  • number of training courses on the Internet offered to teachers

  • quality of training courses on the Internet offered to teachers (accreditation)

  • number of new courses offered since the Internet was introduced

  • number of schools/universities utilizing distance education via the Internet

  • number of courses that supplement conventional teaching methods with distance education or other Internet-dependent technologies

  • number of students enrolled in distance education

  • number of nonuniversity institutions offering distance education

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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It is also possible to ask what the impacts of the Internet are on functions, such as classroom teaching, distance teaching, curriculum development and maintenance, preparation and dissemination of teaching materials and texts, educational finance, teacher training, supervision and continuing education, and design and maintenance of school facilities, etc.

Other indirect impacts of the Internet in education include the career experiences of students who have had access to the Internet in primary or secondary school. For example, are students who had access to distance learning or other advanced teaching techniques that utilize communications technologies able to secure better and higher-paying jobs than their peers who had no access to the Internet or other communications technologies? Such information could likely be obtained by monitoring job advertisements that mention Internet skills. Some relevant indicators in this regard include the:

  • ratio of job placement of students with Internet experience/training in school to overall placement

  • ratio of average starting salaries of individuals with Internet experience/training in school to overall starting salaries

Inasmuch as universities are also centers of research, they strive not only to attract and educate the best students but also to attract the best scholars and researchers, often on a temporary basis. And as researchers increasingly are communicating, publishing, and conducting research via the Internet, they are attracted to research at institutions that have Internet services. Universities in developing countries will likely find that Internet access is key to attracting scholars and researchers from abroad. A relevant indicator would be the:

  • number of scholars/researchers attracted to a university/country (in part) because of Internet access

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Development Goals

The development goals associated with education in Africa clearly depend on the specific context but include literacy, the ability to work competitively in a global marketplace, preparation to work in today's workplace and adapt to that of the next century, knowledge and understanding necessary for effective citizenship in a participatory government system, social competence to safeguard the health of families and communities and to evaluate and implement alternatives for family planning, and the ability to live and participate peacefully in a multiethnic community. Each such global educational objective can be seen as inducing the development of indicators as to whether changes are occurring, their desirability, and the degree to which those changes are impacts of the changing information and communications environment typified by introduction of the Internet.

The keystone institution in the education sector is clearly the school: primary, secondary, and tertiary (or higher). This sector also includes distance education and nonformal education programs and institutions. It includes other formal organizations such as government agencies that regulate education, research organizations that conduct educational research, and financial organizations involved in school financing or in administering fellowships and scholarships. It includes other institutions, such as community institutions that relate to the schools (e.g. parent-teacher organizations), professional associations among teachers, and institutions that mediate the selection of schools by students and teachers by schools. Thus, the impacts of the introduction of the Internet on the education sector may be many and varied.

Private Sector
Sectoral Goals

Businesses and foreign investors increasingly see Internet access as a necessity for doing business. In Ghana various chambers of commerce and business organizations are recognizing

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

that, as one organization representative noted to the committee, “you need to get connected in this competitive world.” Other organizations, such as the West African Enterprise Network, are able to get information on domestic and foreign markets with which to help their members. But many other businesses, small and large, do not yet have Internet access.

The impacts of the Internet on the private sector can be measured by seeking to understand the impacts on firms, especially firms engaged in manufacturing and trade; on markets for raw materials, intermediate goods and services, and final products; on such associations as trade associations and chambers of commerce that participate in the sector; on community institutions that relate to the industrial and trade sectors; and on the government agencies that serve and regulate the sector.

Communications technologies would appear to be especially important in market institutions that depend heavily on information on supply and demand and on the capacity to analyze changes in a situation rapidly and accurately. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the private sector can benefit, and already is benefiting, from increased information about suppliers, products, and markets; from communications with customers or clients and with other firms; and from increased product differentiation. As one example, the Kenyan automobile market, which imports approximately 90 percent of its vehicles used from the Gulf region, has experienced a decline in per-unit cost to the consumer. In committee interviews in Nairobi, one observer attributed this to use of the Internet by both consumers and competing dealers to compare prices from suppliers, thereby driving prices down.

The availability of the Internet should thus reduce some transaction costs, increase the speed with which information is transmitted through a market, and increase the quality of some of the information used. Unequal access to the Internet would seem likely to create market advantages for some and disadvantages for others. The Internet seems likely to increase the size of many markets, insofar as it serves to reduce geographical barriers to obtaining and providing market information. Indeed, some have credited the developments of comparable

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

communications technologies with the explosive growth of international financial markets in recent decades. Market processes may be modified to take advantage of new potentials and to avert new risks created by the Internet. Stock market procedures have been modified to reduce the risk that very rapid changes in market value created by computerized stock trading might result in market instability.

Particular interest in Africa will probably be directed at such indicators as the:

  • rates of participation of African firms in international markets

  • rates of participation of foreign firms in African markets

  • numbers of Web pages providing information on a market

  • numbers of persons communicating about a market on the Internet

  • volume of transactions in a market using the Internet

Comparable indicators can be derived to measure the impacts of the Internet on other African institutions.

Increased information for buyers and sellers, in turn, has the potential to level the international playing field for developing countries by helping them to increase regional trade and their exports to Western countries. Thus, at the sector level, concern is with the quantity and quality of goods and services produced, their relevance to the needs of the consumer, the affordability of the goods and services to the consumer as well as the employment created, the return on capital invested, and the externalities such as pollution or benefits to the community.

One should be concerned with changes in indicators as to whether societal objectives of these kinds are being met. Appropriately selected individuals can make reasoned judgments as to whether the impacts of introduction of the Internet have been supportive or destructive to these objectives. Modest information should be possible on the magnitude of the sectoral impacts observed or inferred through such indicators as the:

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×
  • number (percentage) of chambers of commerce with Internet access

  • number (percentage) of other business organizations with Internet access

  • number of small and medium-sized enterprises with Internet access

  • number of small and medium-sized enterprises posting products and prices on the Internet

  • rate of change in the value of an enterprise's exports (imports) since acquiring Internet access

  • rate of change in the value of a country's exports (imports) since acquiring Internet access

  • rate of change in the value of a firm's exports since acquiring Internet access

  • number of companies reporting growth since availability of the Internet

  • number of firms engaged in electronic commerce

  • value of sales via the Internet

  • funds allocated by private companies to Internet-related training

  • growth rates of private telecenters that provide Internet services

Development Goals

The development goals related to private-sector expansion are like those discussed above: goods and services relevant to the needs of the population that are of good quality and equitably available at reasonable prices, with the creation of good employment opportunities, a good return on capital, and a minimum of negative externalities. The goals might well involve improvement of performance in terms of the rule of law (such as when one seeks to substitute legal activities for those involved in the manufacture and distribution of narcotics) or improved affiliation of workers and customers with a national culture. Again, such macro socioeconomic objectives can, in theory, indicate Internet impacts.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

Africa is faced with a scarcity of financial and human resources needed to take advantage of this potential and has an unfortunate recent history of lack of economic progress. Maximizing the beneficial economic impacts of the Internet there will require not only introduction of the technology in millions of enterprises but also the training of millions of users and institutional reforms. Neither “parachute drops” of computers and software or showpiece computers in executive offices will do much good. To maximize benefits, the scarce resources will have to be used to introduce the Internet to reduce key bottlenecks to economic progress. Connectivity will have to focus on key enterprises and regulatory agencies, on key market constraints, and on key trade and commercial organizations, and the evolving pattern will have to create synergies among applications. Some of this orchestration can be planned by governments. Governments in other developing countries such as Malaysia and India have recently taken steps to meet long-term development needs through information technologies by joining with private sector interests to design incentives and regulations to support investment in the sector. But to achieve the full potential of the Internet, decentralized decisionmaking on its acquisition and use will have to be encouraged and done well and in ways that benefit the enterprises as well as the total economy. Data on the impacts of introduction of the Internet will have to be available then not only to government decisionmakers, but also to the large numbers of people making these decentralized decisions. Ideally, data should be sufficient to inform decisions on the priority for allocation of resources among alternative applications of the Internet. To achieve this, top government officials must be much more proactive in extolling the economic benefit of, for example, electronic commerce, to their populations.

Negative economic impacts of the Internet are a real possibility and must be monitored carefully. The Industrial Revolution brought not only great benefits to the world but also great suffering to millions, and it is increasingly clear that the impacts were not intrinsic to the inventions per se but contingent on the way in which they were disseminated and used. The impacts were contingent on the policies of governments and economies. Certainly, most of Africa has fallen behind in other technologically based revolutions, and history suggests that one must consider the possibility that African countries will lose even more market share in international

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

markets to countries that overcome distance or resource constraints by using the Internet more effectively.

Indeed, one must consider the degree to which foreign enterprises and governments may utilize their greater mastery of the Internet to put Africa at a further disadvantage. The Economic Commission for Africa recognizes these risks and benefits in its Africa Information Society Initiative, which urges governments to get actively involved so as not to be left further behind.31 Moreover, the transfer of the Internet from the United States, Europe, and Japan will entail transfer of parts of developed countries' economic culture to Africa. These cultural aspects may be all but invisible as they occur, but the impacts on African economies and cultures may be important. It seems likely that the economic impacts of the Internet in Africa will be powerful and will fall unevenly on the continent's population. Those impacts will be contingent on the policies adopted by African institutions in each country. It seems important therefore to monitor the economic impacts of introduction of the Internet in real time, using the information provided by these indicators analytically to guide policy and to monitor the functioning of institutions. While it will be easier to monitor expected and quantifiable economic impacts at the level of the firm or enterprise, one must not miss the forest for the trees.

Government and Civil Society
Sectoral Goals

Governments, political parties, and other political entities can use the Internet to disseminate information, facilitate government responsiveness to citizens, and increase (or hinder) access to information by the entire electorate. Citizens and interest groups can use the Internet to facilitate open debate and discussion and increase their participation in governance.

Relevant indicators include the:

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×
  • number of ministries/departments with a presence on the Web

  • number of ministries/departments with e-mail reply addresses on the Web

  • quality of Web site content in the above-described classes of Web sites

  • percentage of ministries/departments who use it for dissemination of information about governmental actions or policies

  • number of political parties with a presence on the Web

  • Internet access to government policy papers and pending and existing legislation and regulations

  • number of organizations using Internet networks, user groups, etc., to influence government

  • number of list servers, news groups and conferences holding on-line discussions of public policy issues

  • number of NGOs with Internet access

  • number of publicly-available sites with free or low-cost Internet access, such as kiosks, post offices, community centers, or libraries

The Internet can also increase (or decrease) the transparency of an electoral process. For example, in Ghana, Network Computer Services monitored its Internet traffic into and out of the country during the recent elections. NCS reported that, whereas the normal ratio of incoming to outgoing traffic is 4:1 or 5:1, it was 2:1 or 3:1 during the elections. NCS attributed this increase in incoming traffic to people in other countries seeking information about the elections.

The indicators above generally are intended to measure actions by governments that are considered “positive” in terms of democratization and civil society building. But it is also probable that some governments, particularly authoritarian ones, will take actions that would be considered negative by Western democratic standards, such as imposing sanctions on Internet access for political reasons. Indicators specifically designed to measure such negative actions might be developed.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

Related to government and citizen use of the Internet is the mass media. Effective media, independent from government and lobby pressures, can contribute to effective governance and civil society. Relevant indicators are the:

  • number of independent sources of information and news provided via the Internet

  • number of newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations using the Internet to collect news

  • number of newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, and other media with Web sites

  • percentage of domestic and foreign readers

Development Goals

When considering the government sector, development goals center around democratization and civil society building in addition to the services governments typically provide, such as health services, law enforcement, and so forth. Democratization implies a transparent political process and the participation of informed citizens in the process of governance, especially in the election of governmental leaders, development of government policy, and oversight of governmental executive and judiciary functions. Clearly, it is possible to conduct sample surveys to ascertain if people believe that participation is increasing or decreasing because of Internet diffusion, whether it is more or less informed, and whether these functions are better or more poorly conducted now than in the past and, further, to discover the degree to which introduction of the Internet is believed by the public to be responsible for changes or for maintaining the status quo. According to the criteria used for selection of persons to be included in the survey, different indicators would be developed. Thus, a survey of government bureaucrats might result in different opinions than a survey of social scientists, politicians, or citizens at large.

Inasmuch as the Internet has the potential to help a government exercise legitimate authority, it can also help illegitimate forces undermine authority. Also, what information is

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
×

provided or used and to or by whom is important. Whereas a government offering information on a proposed law and providing a venue for citizen input is seen as a positive impact on democratization, an authoritarian government providing or “bombarding” the public with false information or propaganda designed to further its own aims would be considered a negative impact.

Comparably, the development of civil society involves the development of a network of noncommercial, nongovernmental organizations, with memberships of informed and active people, that are able to articulate the positions of their members to the public at large, to elites, and to the various branches of government. Surveys of informed persons could be used to obtain data on whether the Internet's impacts are perceived as beneficial or detrimental and on the magnitude of the impacts of the Internet on direct communication between government and citizens, media-intermediated contact between citizens and government, and on the role of civil society organizations in promoting public awareness and participation in government decisionmaking.32

The Internet is a critical element of an information and communications revolution that is likely to prompt profound changes in interpersonal, intergroup, and interinstitutional relationships in Africa. Whether the overall impacts of the Internet are to stabilize or destabilize governance, to increase participation or to support coercive efforts, will be crucially important. Yet the complexity of the network of effects of the Internet on society and the ramifications of these effects through policies and institutions are extraordinarily complex. Ultimate judgments may have to be made about the impacts of the Internet, and these without doubt will be made by the population, using qualitative techniques. Such would be the ultimate indicator of the impacts of the Internet on democratization and civil society.

32  

One such survey that the committee is aware of is being carried out by the University of California, Santa Barbara, under its Government and Politics on the Net Project.

Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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Suggested Citation:"4. INDICATORS OF INTERNET IMPACTS." National Research Council. 1998. Internet Counts: Measuring the Impacts of the Internet. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9845.
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