Official Statistics in the era of Ubiquitous connectivity and Pervasive Technologies

Summary Scenarios about future developments in ICT (information and communication technologies) and the internet in particular are becoming more and more precise, at least as far as the near future direction of technical developments is concerned. Ideas which seemed to be science fiction some time ago, are now taking the form of tangible research projects and it is certain that a number of these ideas will end up in real life applications. Ubiquitous connectivity and context aware technologies (or pervasive technologies) are at the centre of ICT 2.0 2 scenarios. A predominant characteristic of future ICT will be that data and metadata storage and exchange, information processing / computation, censoring, data linking and reporting will become standard, embedded features in thousands of devices (fixed and mobile) used in everyday life. What do these developments mean for Official Statistics? The internet itself is becoming a rich data source which can reduce remarkably the response burden on individuals and businesses. The European Statistical System (ESS) should respond positively to the challenge of developing an appropriate quality framework for the measurement of internet traffic flows (ITF) for statistical purposes. Actions in this area will require synergies between official statistics and private source data as well as co-ordination within the international statistical community 3 .