During the last decade, due to the changes occurred in the society by the incoming of the Information Society, an increasing demand of quantitative and qualitative information on the evolution and impact of the information and communication technologies at a global, regional and local level, has become evident.

The technologies which have gained a leading part in this process are mobile telephony, computers and the Internet. These technologies, together with the more traditional ones such as television and radio, have been the main reference point in monitoring the construction and evolution of the Information Society.

Latin America and the Caribbean suffers from a dramatic scarcity of comparable statistical data on matters related to the information society. The statistics available are usually based on methodologies that are not very sound, are sometimes influenced by vested interests and are often one-off calculations that are not repeated over time in a fashion that would serve to assess the real progress of the information society. Any analysis based on such data therefore tends to be incomplete and may even be misleading.

These shortcomings mean that important decisions in the region may be being made on the basis of conjecture. Governments wishing to develop comprehensive national plans are forced to look for information -which may not even be reliable- in a piecemeal fashion in their own markets and in other countries.
To address these matters, ECLAC created OSILAC in 2003 in collaboration with the Institute for Connectivity in the Americas (ICA), a programme being incubated at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

The compilation of statistics and the definition and estimation of ICT indicators harmonized by OSILAC have several purposes; some of them are:

• To obtain basic estimations on the levels and trends in the access and use of ICT which are useful to monitor the progress of the Information Society.
• To enable the comparisons concerning the evolution of the access and use of ICT over time, both among the countries and within each country.
• To enable the monitoring and definition of strategies to prevent a new form of socioeconomic exclusion, named “digital divide”, which, if it increases, can have multiplicative effects in other social and economic divides already existing or promote the creation of new forms of social exclusion.
• To identify and describe factors that promote the increase (or decrease) of the digital divides.
• To identify the countries with more and less development in terms of access and use of ICT, and to quantify the existing divides among them.
• To serve as input for the evaluation of the digital policies implemented in the countries, and for the development planning of the ICT and through the ICT.

The United Nations Millennium Declaration was one of the first scenarios to show the need to agree upon a group of indicators of the socioeconomic development of the countries, which included ICT indicators. This declaration was signed in September 2000 by 189 countries, in New York, and its Goal 18 sets out: "In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication". As indicators for the follow-up of this process, the following are recommended: "Telephone lines and cellular telephone subscribers per 100 inhabitants, personal computers in use per 100 inhabitants and Internet users per 100 inhabitants".

Likewise, several international calls have been made for mechanisms to monitor the status and impact of ICTs in all countries, such as the Declaration of Florianópolis, and the Bavaro Declaration.

Thereafter, many initiatives have arisen in countries around the world regarding the measurement of the transformations and impact of the ICT in the lives of people, in the different sectors of society and in the organizations. Among them, one of the most relevant is the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which took place in two phases: the first one was held in Geneva (Switzerland), in December 2003, and the second one was held in Tunis, in November 2005. The bases for measuring the global progress in the access and use of ICT were adopted in the WSIS 2003, where: i) a Plan of Action The Plan of Action of the WSIS from December 12^th, 2003, states: "E) Follow-up and evaluation 28. A realistic international performance evaluation and benchmarking (both qualitative and quantitative), should be developed through comparable statistics indicators and research results, to follow up the achievement of the objectives, goals and targets in the Plan of Action, considering the different national circumstances. F) All countries and regions should develop tools so as to provide statistics on the information society, with core indicators and analysis of its substantial dimensions. Priority should be given to the establishment of consistent and internationally comparable indicators systems, taking into account the different levels of development". was approved in which the need to establish the course of the Information Society in all countries, was stated, and ii) the creation of the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development was established, whose principal mission is to identify a set of core indicators for measuring ICT; its members are: the International Telecommunication Unit (ITU), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), the United Nations Regional Commissions (ECLAC, ECA, UNESCAP, UNESCWA), Eurostat and the World Bank.

The core indicators were consolidated and presented for the first time at the Thematic Meeting of the World Summit for the Information Society, held in Geneva in February 2005 and endorsed by the United Nations Statistical Commission in its 38^th session on February 2007. Later on, the list was revised by the Partnership in 2008 and was presented as a background document before the Commission on its 40^th session, in February 2009. Finally, the updated publication of the Core ICT Indicators was presented at the 41^st session of the Commission, in February 2010. The revision 2010 has introduced a series of changes aiming at improving the comparability of the measurements made by the data producers of the countries, and reflecting the technological changes of the last three years.

OSILAC seeks to (i) provide support for the production, compilation, processing and dissemination of data, indicators and methodologies, standardizing and harmonizing ICT statistics collected at the subregional, national and local levels; (ii) build up the capacities of the technical staff in national statistical institutes and other agencies working on ICT issues to use the methodologies and techniques required to collect and process data on the information society and economy; and (iii) prepare methodological and conceptual frameworks in an interactive and participatory manner, in order to implement ICT statistics in surveys conducted in the countries of the region, while both contributing to and learning from similar developments at the global level.

To this end, OSILAC: (i) has built and continues to roll out a database containing information on the main indicators and statistics that report on the status of information society technologies; (ii) produces documents containing statistical information on the status of ICTs; (iii) is in permanent contact with the staff responsible for implementing ICT statistics in national statistical institutes in the region, sharing with them tools developed to carry the issue forward, inviting and addressing their methodological concerns, and compiling information on the metadata included in the questionnaires and the data generated by surveys; (iv) during its second phase, it will conduct technical assistance missions to a number of national statistical institutes in the region that are interested in implementing ICT statistics, while continuing to foster that interest through interactive participation in online discussion forums and regional coordination and training workshops, of which one was held in November 2003 in Santiago, Chile; and (v) prepares methodological studies and conceptual documents on the measurement of the information society.

As a project devoted to improving information on technologies that form part of the information society, OSILAC involves all the actors engaged in producing official statistics in the Latin American and Caribbean countries that are members of ECLAC, as well as other regional agencies working in this area. The staff who take part are usually those who deal with the methodological and operational aspects of surveys that may include questions on ICTs (such as household, quality of life, labour and expenditure surveys) in firms, government agencies, educational establishments, research centres, and so on.