1. Introduction
1.1 Information Included
This is the eighth annual release of the Ministry of Economic Development's information paper on IT Statistics in New Zealand. Not all of the information is new but is carried over from previous versions for completeness. Sections which include new or updated information are clearly indicated.
Over the past 12 months, a number of papers have appeared which include statistical information about New Zealand electronic commerce and IT-related areas. Those published by the Ministry of Economic Development may be found by looking for Electronic Commerce or Information Technology, wither directly or under the Publications section. Much useful information, which overlaps to some extent with that in this paper, can also be found in The State of e-New Zealand, published by the Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation (look under "Research" at http://www.iscr.org.nz ).
New information in this paper includes:
- figures for IT hardware imports and exports updated to March 2000;
- figures for trade in software and services and the size of the New Zealand information technology (IT) market updated to March 2000;
- information on the size of the Internet in New Zealand and world wide, and the number of Web sites updated to March 2001.
Information carried over from previous reports:
- figures for employment in segments of the IT industry from the 1996 Census;
- information on the numbers of computers in New Zealand homes compared with a selection of other electronic amenities;
- information on the number of computers and Internet connections in New Zealand schools;
- information about the number of students enrolled in IT related courses in New Zealand universities, based on a survey carried out by the Ministry of Economic Development over the 1999/2000 summer.
It is anticipated that a major revision of this paper will be released towards the end of this year. The revision will include information from the 2001 Census and the three-yearly Household Economic Survey. Results from these are expected to be available about the end of September 2001. In addition the results of research currently being conducted by this Ministry should be available about that time.
1.2 Acknowledgements
Information in this paper has been derived mainly from public sources, or from specially commissioned surveys by Statistics New Zealand or the Ministry of Economic Development. References and sources are highlighted (bold) in the text and detailed in Section 9.
Special acknowledgement is made of the statistics and other information about the Internet in New Zealand collected and made available by Mark Davies of Victoria University of Wellington.
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