One of the current policy reform agenda of the government is to have a dynamic innovative ecosystem, digital transformation of government, and enhance digital connectivity where Information and Communications Technology (ICT) played a vital role. Statistics related to ICT will be useful in crafting evidence-based policies and programs to achieve these agenda.

As part of the integral component of the National ICT Statistics Roadmap 2019-2022, which seeks to establish the foundation for ICT statistics in the country, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) conducted the first National Information and Communications Technology Household Survey (NICTHS) in 2019 through the Philippine Statistical Research and Training Institute. The NICTHS aims to track key household and individual indicators to help monitor the broad development impact of ICT in our country.

The NICTHS is part of the larger Digital Philippines initiative of the DICT. An initiative dedicated to providing every Filipino with access to vital ICT infrastructure and services. It aspires to ensure the sustainable growth of ICT-enabled industries, create more jobs, establish One Digitized Government, One Nation, support the administration in achieving its goals, and be the enabler, innovator, achiever, and leader in pushing the country’s development and transition towards a world-class digital economy.

The implementation of the 2023 NICTHS will be handled by the Philippine Statistics Authority, mandated under Republic Act No. 10625 (The Philippine Statistical Act of 2013), as the central statistical authority of the Philippine government on primary data collection.

The 2023 NICTHS aims to provide data on household and individual indicators in the post-recovery period following the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey will generate updated benchmarks for key ICT indicators that have seen a surge during the pandemic, as accelerated use of ICTs has been widely observed by households, individuals, government, and the private sector.

OBJECTIVES OF THE SURVEY

The main goal of the survey is to gather updated household and individual ICT data that are necessary in producing internationally comparable core ICT indicators. Gathered information will serve as valuable input in monitoring existing programs, development of potential projects, and formulation of future policies geared towards the advancement of ICT in the country. Moreover, the 2023 NICTHS will support evidence-based policies and plans towards the improved implementation of ICT services in the coming years.

The conduct of the 2023 NICTHS is a crucial step towards effective monitoring of performance indicators (i.e., Sustainable Development Goals, Philippine Development Plan Results Matrix, DICT plans, and international benchmarking indexes) especially considering the growth in the demand of ICT brought about by the pandemic.

 To achieve its goal of providing policymakers and stakeholders with accurate and up-to-date information on ICT access and use among households in the Philippines, the NICTHS has set the following objectives:

a. Gather ICT data at household level to continuously support the monitoring of performance indicators in the SDGs, PDP Results Matrix, DICT plans, and international benchmarking indices;

b. Monitor the development of the identified critical data on ICT supply and demand;

c. Assess and monitor the growth of potential markets in the digital economy (e.g., e-commerce);

d. Provide inputs to the development of national ICT plans, programs, projects, and policies;

e. Provide a comparative analysis of data gathered from 2019 baseline; and

f. Improve the design of survey instruments and overall survey strategy, including data processing.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SURVEY

The results of the Assessment of ICT Statistics conducted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 2013 highlighted the scarcity of ICT statistics in the Philippines given very limited data on ICT infrastructure, businesses, and the government’s use of ICT. The assessment also showed evidence on the lack of data on ownership of ICT devices and ICT subscriptions provided by telecommunication companies. There was also a clear lack of household and individual data on the access and use of ICT. This lack of ICT statistics then resulted to a limited understanding of the impact of the ICT sector in the country’s social and economic development.

The conduct of the 2023 NICTHS is a key step in addressing the lack of ICT demand statistics in the country. ICT statistics are critical in identifying strategies for improving e-government services and its policy development, planning and monitoring processes. Moreover, they play a significant role in e-business, as well as banking and financial services.

SCOPE OF THE SURVEY

The NICTHS will be implemented into two phases. Phase 1 – Field Data Collection will run for 29 weeks covering the survey preparatory activities up to the enumeration and supervision during data collection. The second phase will be conducted to cover the remaining activities related to post data processing, data analysis, data dissemination and project documentation. With regions as domain, survey operations for the 2023 NICTHS will run for 26 days, including Saturdays but excluding holidays, starting on the 25th week up to the 29th week upon the issuance of the Notice to Proceed (NTP). The survey sample will consist of 45,280 housing units (including VHUs) from 3,055 barangays under the 2023 Geo-enabled Master Sample (GeoMS).

The data that will be gathered from this survey will be used mainly to describe the following:

a. ICT Use and Access

b. ICT Skills

c. Digital Economy

d. Technology Enabled Incidents

e. E-Waste

f. SIM Card Registration

g. Other indicators (e.g., functional difficulties due to health problems, artificial intelligence, emergency and disaster preparedness, etc.)

AUTHORITY TO CONDUCT OF THE 2023 NICTHS

Section 5 of Republic Act 10625, also known as the Philippine Statistical Act of 2013, approved on September 12, 2013, states that “the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) shall be primarily responsible for all national censuses and surveys, including sectoral statistics, consolidation of administrative recording system, and compilation of national accounts.”

CONFIDENTIALITY OF INFORMATION

Section 26 of RA No. 10625 stipulates that “individual data furnished by a respondent to statistical inquiries, surveys, and censuses of the PSA shall be considered PRIVILEGED COMMUNICATION and as such shall be inadmissible as evidence in any proceeding. The PSA may release data gathered from surveys only in the form of summaries or statistical tables, in which no reference to an individual, corporation, association, partnership, institution or business enterprise shall appear.”

Article 55 of RA No. 10625, states that "The information collected shall not be used for purposes of taxation, investigation or regulation."

Likewise, Section 27 of RA No. 10625 states that a person, including parties within the PSA Board and the PSA, who breach the confidentiality of information, whether by carelessness, improper behavior, behavior with malicious intent, and use of confidential information for profit shall be liable to a fine of five thousand pesos (PhP 5,000.00) to not more than ten thousand pesos (PhP 10,000.00) and or imprisonment of three months but not to exceed one year, subject to the degree of breach of information.

Paragraph 3 of Section 27 (Penalties) of RA No. 10625 also states that “any person, including parties within the PSA Board and the PSA, who breach the confidentiality of information, whether by carelessness, improper behavior, behavior with malicious intent, and use of confidential information for profit shall be liable to a fine of five thousand pesos (PHP 5,000.00) to not more than ten thousand pesos (PHP 10,000.00) and/or imprisonment of three (3) months but not to exceed one (1) year, subject to the degree of breach of information.”

Section. 19 of RA No. 10173 states that the personal information shall be held under STRICT CONFIDENTIALITY and shall be used only for the declared purpose. Likewise, the immediately preceding sections are not applicable to processing of personal information gathered for the purpose of investigations in relation to any criminal, administrative or tax liabilities of a data subject.

Moreover, Section 20 of RA No. 10173 stipulates that “the employees, agents or representatives of a personal information controller who are involved in the processing of personal information shall operate and hold personal information under STRICT CONFIDENTIALITY if the personal information is not intended for public disclosure. This obligation shall continue even after leaving the public service, transfer to another position or upon termination of employment or contractual relations”.

Sections 26 to 29 of RA 10173 also states that the breach in the confidentiality of information, whether negligence, improper disposal, behavior with malicious intent, unauthorized access or intentional breach, and unauthorized disclosure, shall be penalized by imprisonment ranging from six (6) months to seven (7) years and a fine of not less than one hundred thousand pesos (PhP 100,000.00) but not more than seven (7) million pesos(PhP 7,000,000.00), depending on the acts defined in these Sections.

DATA COLLECTION

To ensure efficiency given the scope and coverage of the survey, the 2023 NICTHS will employ the Computer-Aided Personal Interviews (CAPI) method for data collection. The Community-level Questionnaire will be administered by the TSs to each selected PSU. An interview will be conducted with the barangay captain or any barangay official who possesses sufficient knowledge about the community's ICT access/availability/ownership, as well as the ICT usage and skills of their colleagues.

The Household Questionnaire will be administered by the SRs to an average of 16 selected households in each PSU. The household head or any qualified household member will be asked about the household's ICT usage and the availability of household assets. For each household, a randomly selected member, aged 10 years and over, will be interviewed regarding their individual use of ICT, digital economy/e-commerce participation, experiences with technology-enabled incidents, e-waste related practices, and SIM card registration awareness and compliance.

Callbacks will be conducted if the target respondent is not present or unavailable during the interviewer's visit. Field personnel should schedule no more than two (2) callbacks to a respondent. If two (2) callbacks have already been made and the respondent is still not available or firmly refuses to be interviewed, a total of three (3) visits have been made, the field personnel may replace theselected sample using the pre-determined sample replacements.

SAMPLING DESIGN

The 2023 Geo-enabled Master Sample (GeoMS) design for household-based surveys is a two-stage cluster sampling design with barangays or enumeration areas (EAs) or groups of nearby barangays or EAs as the primary sampling unit (PSU), and housing units serving as the secondary sampling unit (SSU) within the PSUs.

The 2023 Geo-enabled MS sampling frame is constructed based on the results of the 2020 Census of Population and Housing. The EA Reference File (EARF) of the 2020 Census of Population is used as the PSU frame while the 2020 list of households for each of the PSUs is used as the SSU frame.

SAMPLING DOMAINS

To provide subnational or provincial level statistics with precise estimates the 2023 Geo-enabled MS has 118 sampling domains. Listed as follows: 82 provinces (including Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur); 33 highly urbanized cities (including 16 cities in the National Capital Region); and 3 other urban areas (Pateros, Isabela City, and Cotabato City).

PRIMARY SAMPLING UNIT 

In the 2023 Geo-enabled Master Sample Design, each sampling domain (i.e., province/HUC) is divided into exhaustive and non-overlapping area segments known as Primary Sampling Units (PSUs) with about 100 to 300 households. A PSU can be any of the following:

a. a single enumeration area (EA) barangay; or

b. two or more adjacent small EAs within the same barangay; or

c. two or more adjacent small barangays of the same city/municipality; or

d. portion or an EA of a multi-EA barangay.

Out of the 42,046 barangays in the Philippines, 127,028 PSUs were formed. A significant number of these PSUs, or about 15 percent of the total were formed in Region IVA. CAR has the fewest PSUs formed, making up about 2 percent of the total.

REPLICATES

From the ordered list of PSUs, all possible systematic samples of 6 PSUs are drawn to form a replicate for most of the province domain i.e., 76 out of 82 provinces while all possible systematic samples of 8 PSUs are drawn to form a replicate for most of the HUCs, that is, 31 of 33 HUCs.

Three (3) PSUs are drawn to form a replicate for small provinces/HUC domains such as Batanes, Guimaras, Siquijor, Camiguin, Apayao, and Dinagat Islands, and three (3) to five (5) PSUs per replicate are allocated for small HUCs such as San Juan City and Lucena City and for special areas such as Pateros, City of Isabela, and Cotabato City.

SAMPLE ALLOCATION

At least one (1) sample replicate per sampling domain is required to generate a reliable national- level estimate, four (4) sample replicates to generate a reliable regional level estimate, and sixteen 16 sample replicates to generate reliable province/HUC level estimate. For the NICTHS, a total of 4 sample replicates were allotted. For other household-based surveys such as: 2016 Annual Poverty Indicator Survey (APIS); 2016 Household Survey on Domestic Visitors (HSDV); and 2016 Model Functional Survey (MFS), only one (1) sample replicate was allotted.

The total number of sample Secondary Sampling Units (SSUs) are allotted proportionately to the measure of size of the PSU. Thus, a PSU with lesser number of housing units/households would have lesser number of sampled SSUs than those PSUs with larger number of housing units/households. On the average, a total of 12 sample Housing Units are allotted for each sample PSUs in Highly Urbanized City domain while 16 sample Housing Units/Households are allotted for every PSUs in province domain.

SAMPLE SELECTION

In the first stage, PSUs are systematically selected from the Master Sample PSU frame of each sampling domain with equal probability. During the second stage of selection, housing units are drawn systematically for each sample PSU.

REPLACEMENT PROCEDURE

In this portion, how to determine the eligibility of a selected household, to conduct a screening, and to select an eligible sample, will be discussed.

ELIGIBLE SAMPLE HOUSEHOLD

Samples are considered eligible if data/information can be gathered from these sample units. These are sample households wherein as of visit at least one respondent is available for interview. An eligible sample household is one whose interview status is any of the following:

01 Completed interview;

02 Refusal;

03 Entire household absent for extended period of time;

07 Housing unit not found; or

08 Critical/COVID-19 or flooded areas

Refusals are considered eligible since the respondent is physically present, however chooses not to proceed with the survey interview. Special cases such as housing unit not found, entire household absent for extended period of time or critical/COVID-19 or flooded area are also considered eligible given that these households are actually listed during census and part of the sampling frame.

NON-ELIGIBLE SAMPLE HOUSEHOLD

These are sample SSUs wherein upon visit there is no available respondent in the listed housing unit.

A non-eligible sample household is one whose interview status code is any of the following:

41 Vacant Housing Unit (VHU) NOT REPLACED

51 Housing unit destroyed/demolished NOT REPLACED

61 Address not a housing unit NOT REPLACED

91 Permanently Moved Out (PMO), Not Usual Resident (NUR), Single Person Occupying the

Housing Unit (SPOHU) passed away, Others (e.g. single person occupying the housing unit is less than 15 years old; all resident members occupying the housing unit are less than 15 years old; household with resident members aged less than 15 years old living with domestic helper only or single person occupying the housing unit with intellectual disability) NOT REPLACED

98 Merged with another household

LIST OF SAMPLE BARANGAYS/EAS, SAMPLE HOUSING UNITS, SAMPLE HOUSEHOLDS AND REPLACEMENT SSU

The 2023 NICTHS will use 4 replicates of samples from the 2023 Geo-enabled Master Sample (2023 GeoMS) or 45,280 sample housing units (including VHUs) nationwide.

Given the possible number of non-eligible respondents, the desired effective sample size of 43,344 sample housing units or households should be achieved. This sample size will allow for the generation of reliable estimates at the regional level indicators.

To strictly ensure that the desired effective sample size is achieved, the 2023 GeoMS design implementation allows the replacement of Secondary Sampling Units (SSUs) with original replacement SSUs , that are selected by oversampling three (3) housing units per Primary Sampling Unit (PSU) using the same random start and sampling interval for the PSU.

Replacement of SSU is done if the following situations are observed during the visit:

a. the housing unit (HU) turns out to be vacant;

b. the HU is destroyed/demolished;

c. the HU is converted to purposes other than residential; or

d. other circumstances such as there is only one household in a housing but:

i. the household permanently moved out);

ii. the household was found to be not permanent resident of the housing unit;

iii. the single person occupying the housing unit had passed away;

iv. the single person occupying the housing unit is less than 15 years old;

v. all resident members occupying the housing unit are less than 15 years old;

vi. household with resident member/s aged less than 15 years old but living with the domestic helper; or

vii. the single person occupying the housing unit with intellectual disability. Generally, all sample households in the sample housing unit will be interviewed. However, if there are more than three households residing in a sample housing unit, interview only at most three households in the sample housing unit by following this procedure:

(1) the households listed in the list of sample households shall be interviewed, then

(2) if the households residing in the sample housing unit is more than three during the visit, interview the listed sample household, then, randomly select additional household/s in the housing unit and do the interview. Keep in mind to interview at most three households per sample housing unit.

In case the listed households in a sample housing unit are more than one (multiple households), but at the time of visit, it turned out that there is at least one of the household in the housing unit which is eligible, there is no need to replace the other non-eligible household/s in that same housing unit.

For instance, there are two households (Household A and Household B) listed in a housing unit, and if Household A is merged to Household B, there is no need to replace Household A. In another situation, there are three households listed in the sample housing unit, that is, households C, D and E; and if households D and E moved out/transferred to another residence, interview household C and no need to replace household D and E anymore.

In case the listed households in a sample housing unit are more than one (multiple households), but at the time of visit, it turned out that all the households in the housing unit have moved out permanently, then replace the sample housing unit since in the selection of samples housing units are selected and not households.

The SRs should request for replacement/s from the focal persons by submitting the Annex B - Request for replacement SSU log sheet to the provincial focal person. If the SR is already in the Field and cannot submit the replacement log sheet personally, he/she may request and submit reasons for replacement through any means of communication. The accomplished replacement log sheet with the supporting documents will be submitted soonest to the provincial focal person at the Office.

The provincial focal persons are tasked to assess and validate the need for replacements before providing such to the SRs.

For replacement of sample PSUs, and households additional to the three original replacements, the RSSOs and the PSOs are requested to follow the protocol on requests for sample PSU and household replacement for household-based surveys.

The SOCD will provide their respective provinces with the list before the start of fieldwork. All queries regarding the samples shall be addressed to the Census Planning and Coordination Division (CPCD) Master Sample Team copied the LSREDSD.

CERTIFICATION FOR SSUS REQUESTED FOR REPLACEMENT

The approved template Certification (Annex C – Certification for SSUs Requested for Replacement) will be used by the SRs as supporting documents in requesting for additional replacement/s to the focal persons. (Note: The letter head of the PSA Provincial Office may be used for the Certification)

This Certification should be signed by the Barangay Captain or the Officer of the Day of the Barangay. The PO PFP shall submit the scanned copy of the Certification to Census Planning and Coordination Division (CPCD) Master Sample Team at mastersample@psa.gov.ph.

RESPONSE RATE

Response rates are used as indicators of survey data quality and accuracy. Low response rates could result in non-response bias; thus, it is very important to ensure that interviews were completed.

Response rate is computed by dividing the number of complete interviews to the total eligible sample households multiplied by 100.

Given the critical indicators derived from the NICTHS, it is required that the response rate should be at least 95 percent. Field Interviewers are expected to complete interviews with at least 95% of all eligible households. Achievement of the high response rate is critical to achieve results that are representative of the country’s population.