Table A. Proportion of Information Economy Establishments/Employees According to Selected ICT Indicators for Core ICT Industries
Philippines, 2017 and 2015

1. Proportion of IE establishments that own and use computers and communication equipment increased by 1.1 percentage points

A total of 3,648 establishments under the Information Economy (IE) was estimated in 2017. Of these establishments, 99.6 percent owned and used computers and communication equipment in their business operations, which was higher by 1.1 percentage points than the proportion of ownership and usage in 2015 at 98.5 percent. (Table A, and Table 1)

There are two sectors under IE, namely: (1) Content and Media sector and (2) Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. Under the ICT sector, the ICT service industries topped with 99.7 percent of the total IE establishments that owned and used computers and communication equipment. Meanwhile, under the content and media sector, only programming and broadcasting activities (99.8%) did not attain a 100.0 percent proportion in ownership and usage. (Figure 1, and Table 1)

2. Proportion of IE establishments with internet connection or access likewise increased

Of the total IE establishments, 97.9 percent had internet access in 2017. This proportion posted an increase of 1.2 percentage points, from 96.7 percent of IE establishments with internet access in 2015. (Table A, and 1)

Among the specific IE industries, programming and broadcasting activities registered the highest proportion of internet access of 99.8 percent. On the other hand, ICT trade industries reported the least at 96.5 percent. (Figure 2, and Table 1)

Of various transactions done by IE establishments with government offices, 79.1 percent used the internet in obtaining information from government organizations and 79.3 percent in downloading or requesting government forms. (Figure 3, and Table 7)

3. Proportion of IE establishments with website continued to expand

In 2017, 43.7 percent of IE establishments had a website. This was higher by 14.2 percentage points than the 29.5 percent recorded in 2015. (Table A)

Among specific IE activities, publishing activities (58.1%) had the highest proportion of establishments with websites. However, the highest percentage-point increase of 36.1 percent was noted in programming and broadcasting activities. (Table 3)

4. E-commerce transactions via internet went up by 8.7 percentage points

The proportion of IE establishments engaged in e-commerce transaction via internet in 2017 was recorded at 22.2 percent, an increase of 8.7 percentage points from the 13.5 percent reported level in 2015. (Table A)

ICT trade industries, with 30.3 percent registered the highest proportion, followed by publishing activities with 29.5 percent and ICT manufacturing industries, 22.8 percent. (Figure 4, and Table 5)

5. Use of mobile phone in business transactions increased

Cellular mobile phone is another medium that can be used for doing business. Of the total IE establishments, 26.8 percent used mobile phones in their business transactions in 2017, an increase of 9.4 percentage points from the 17.4 percent usage level in 2015.

ICT trade, with 33.8 percent, surpassed other industries in using mobile phones for their business transactions while motion picture, video and television programme production, sound recording, and music publishing activities registered the lowest at 12.8 percent. (Table 5)

6. Four out of ten IE establishments had social media accounts

Presence of social media account among IE establishments reached 39.9 percent in 2017. (Table A)

Among the IE industries, pprogramming and broadcasting activities had the highest proportion with social media account (62.3%), while ICT manufacturing (17.2%) had the least. (Table 8)

7. Proportion of IE employees using computer routinely at work showed an increase over a two-year period

Three in every five IE employees or 63.8 percent used computers routinely at work in 2017. This was higher by 15.9 percentage points, from the 47.9 percent in 2015.  (Table A)

By IE industry, ICT service industries had the highest proportion of employees using computers routinely at work at 92.3 percent. On the other hand, ICT manufacturing industries posted the least at 46.2 percent. (Table 2)

8. IE employees who use computer with internet connection routinely at work went up by 17.2 percentage points

At the national level, 57.2 percent of the total IE employees used computers with internet connection or access routinely at work or 89.7 percent of those who used computer routinely at work.  The proportion of IE employees that used computer with internet connection or access routinely at work in 2017 was higher by 17.2 percentage points than the 40.0 percent level in 2015. (Table A)

ICT service industries had the highest proportion of employees who used computers with internet connection or access at 87.6 percent.  On the other hand, employees of ICT manufacturing industries had the least at 38.0 percent. (Table 2)

(Sgd.) DENNIS S. MAPA, Ph.D.
Undersecretary
National Statistician and Civil Registration General

TECHNICAL NOTES

Background

The 2017 Survey on Information and Communication Technology (SICT) was the seventh in the series of SICT conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). It was a rider to the 2017 Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry (ASPBI) conducted in 2018.

Objective of the Survey

The 2017 SICT collected and generated information on the availability, distribution, and access/utilization of ICT among establishments in the country.

Specifically, the survey measured the following:

a. component of ICT resources and their utilization by establishments
b. diffusion of ICT into establishments from various sources
c. e-commerce transactions from data on e-commerce sales/revenue and purchases
d. cellular mobile phone business transactions from data on sales/revenue
e. estimate of the number of ICT workers in establishments
f. methods of disposal of ICT equipment

Unit of Enumeration

The unit of enumeration of the survey was the establishment. Establishment was defined as an economic unit under a single ownership or control, i.e., under a single legal entity, engaged in one or predominantly one kind of activity at a single fixed location.

Scope and Coverage

The 2017 SICT was undertaken nationwide and covered all industries in the 2017 ASPBI. For the purpose of the survey, these industries were classified as core ICT industries and non-core ICT industries. Core ICT industries were industries comprising the Information Economy (IE). IE refers to industries involved in producing and trading of ICT products, and those which primarily used ICT in providing products and services. For this Special Release, only results from IE industries are presented.

The IE was composed further of the ICT sector and Content and Media sector. The industries under each sector were as follows:

a. ICT Sector
         a.1  ICT Manufacturing Industries
         a.2  ICT Trade Industries
         a.3  ICT Service Industries

•  Software publishing

•  Telecommunication services

•  Computer programming, consultancy and related services

•  Data processing, hosting and related activities; web portals

•  Repair of computers and communication equipment

b. Content and Media Sector
        b.1  Publishing activities
        b.2  Motion picture, video and television programme production, sound recording and music publishing activities
        b.3  Programming and broadcasting activities

The economic activities composing the core ICT industries in the Philippines are listed in Table 1.

Business Process Management (BPM) industries, under the Information and Communication, and Administrative Support Service Activities Sectors, were also covered in this survey round.

BPM is a discipline involving any combination of modeling, automation, execution, control, measurement and optimization of business activity flows, in support of enterprise goals, spanning systems, employees, customers and partners within and beyond the enterprise boundaries.

Table 2 shows the list of BPM industries in the country.

Table 2 List of BPM industries in the Philippines: 2009 PSIC

Sampling Design

The 2017 SICT utilized a stratified systematic sampling design with five-digit PSIC serving as first stratification variable (industry strata/domain) and employment size (Total Employment (TE)) as the second stratification variable (employment strata).

There were only two employment strata used for the survey: Stratum1 - TE of 20 and over, and Stratum 2 - TE of less than 20. For non-core ICT industries, only establishments under the first stratum were covered, except those establishments classified as BPM industries under the administrative and support service activities sector, which were completely covered, regardless of employment size.

Sampling Frame of Establishments

The sampling frame for the 2017 SICT, which was used to draw the sample establishments for the survey, was extracted from the 2017 List of Establishments (LE) as of 18 January 2018. Included in the sampling frame for SICT survey were those establishments confined to the formal sector. The formal sector comprised the following:

   a. Corporations and partnerships
   b. Cooperatives and foundations
   c. Single proprietorship with employment of 10 and over
   d. Single proprietorship with branches

Sample size and selection

Establishments engaged in the core ICT industries were completely enumerated (100%), regardless of employment size. The establishments classified in the non-core ICT industries and with total employment of 20 and over were covered on a 20 percent sampling basis for each of the industry domain at the national level. Per cell (industry domain), the minimum sample size was set to three (3) establishments while the maximum was set to 10 establishments.  However, when the total number of establishments (N) in the cell was less than the set minimum sample size, all establishments in that cell were taken as samples.

A total of 9,543 samples were selected for the survey.

Geographic Domain

For 2017 SICT, the geographic domains for the core ICT and BPM industries were the regions; while the non-core ICT industries was at the national level.

Indicators

Some indicators generated from the survey were as follows:

   a. proportion of establishments using computer
   b. proportion of employees using computers
   c. proportion of establishments with internet connection
   d. proportion of employees using the internet at work
   e. proportion of establishments with Web presence
   f. proportion of establishments with Intranet
   g. proportion of establishments placing and receiving orders over the internet
   h. proportion of establishments using the Internet by type of access and activity
   i. proportion of establishments with LAN and Extranet
   j. proportion of establishments on methods of disposal of ICT equipment

Reference Period

All information collected in the 2017 SICT refers to calendar year 2017, except for employment which was as of 15 November 2017.

Response Rate

The overall response rate for the 2017 SICT was 83.6 percent (7,981 of the 9,543 sample establishments). This included receipts of good  questionnaires¹, partially accomplished questionnaires, and reports of closed, moved out, or out-of-scope establishments. Out of the total responding establishments, 153 establishments responded online.

CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

E-commerce or electronic commerce refers to the sale of goods and services where an order is placed by the buyer, price, and terms of sale are negotiated over the Internet Protocol-based networks, an extranet, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) network, or other online systems.

Extranet is a network or internetwork that is limited in scope to a single organization or entity but which also has limited connections to the networks of one or more other usually, but not necessarily, trusted organizations or entities (e.g. a company's customers may be given access to some part of its intranet creating in this way an extranet, while at the same time the customers may not be considered 'trusted' from a security standpoint).

Information Economy (IE) is a term used to describe the economic and social value created through the ability to rapidly exchange information at anytime, anywhere to anyone. It is characterized by the intensive use by businesses of ICT for the collection, storage, processing and transmission of information. The use of ICT is supported by supply of ICT products from an ICT-producing sector and through trade.

IE is comprised of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Sector and the Content and Media Sector.

Industries under ICT Sector are industries which fulfill and/or enable, by electronic means, the processing, communication, transmission and display of information. It excludes the industries which create the information.

Industries under Content and Media Sector are those which produce goods and services primarily intended to inform, educate and/or entertain humans through mass communication media. These industries are engaged in the production, publishing and/or distribution of content (information, cultural and entertainment products), where content corresponds to an organized message intended for human beings.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as defined by the Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT) is "the totality of electronic means to collect, store, process and present information to end-users in support of their activities". It consists, among others, of computer systems, office systems and consumer electronics, as well as network information infrastructure, the components of which include the telephone system, the Internet, fax machines and computers.

ICT Resources are equipment, knowledge and human resources used to support electronic business/manufacturing processes and the conduct of electronic commerce transactions. It includes computer and peripheral equipment, systems and application software, network channels, telecommunication equipment, routers, satellite and other ICT hardware used in electronic business and commerce transactions, ICT support services and ICT workers.

Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that interchange data by packet switching using the standardized Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and other technologies. The internet carries various information resources and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer and file sharing, online gaming, and the inter-linked hypertext documents and other resources of the World Wide Web (WWW).

Intranet is a set of networks, using the Internet Protocol and IP-based tools such as web browsers and file transfer applications, that is, under the control of a single administrative entity. That administrative entity closes the intranet to all but specific, authorized users. Most commonly, an intranet is the internal network of an organization.

Local Area Network (LAN) is a computer network covering a small physical area, like a home, office, or small group of buildings, such as a school, or an airport. Current LANs are most likely to be based on Ethernet technology. Each workgroup can get to its local printer. Note that the printers are not accessible from outside their workgroup.

Network channel is a collection of computers connected to each other that allows them to communicate with each other, and share resources and information. All networks are made up of basic hardware building blocks to interconnect network nodes, such as Network Interface Cards (NICs), Bridges, Hubs, Switches, and Routers.

Web site is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or more web servers, usually accessible via the internet. All publicly accessible websites are seen collectively as constituting the "World Wide Web". The pages of a website can usually be accessed from a common root URL called the homepage, and usually reside on the same physical server.

Wide Area Network (WAN) is a computer network that covers a broad area (i.e., any network whose communications links cross metropolitan, regional, or national boundaries. Less formally, a WAN is a network that uses routers and public communications links. The largest and most well-known example of a WAN is the internet. A WAN is a data communications network that covers a relatively broad geographic area (i.e. one city to another and one country to another country) and that often uses transmission facilities provided by common carriers, such as telephone companies.