The Fifth Regional Workshop on Information Society Measurement for Latin America and the Caribbean will be held in Rio de Janeiro from 6 to 8 April 2009. The workshop is organized by OSILAC, the Observatory for the Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean (initiative from UN ECLAC, with the support of ICA-IDRC / @LIS-EU), in collaboration with the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), SOFTEX, and the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee.

The main purposes of the forthcoming workshop are:

1. To highlight the progress made in the elaboration and analysis of indicators on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) access and usage, in the countries of the region
2. To discuss and agree on the revised version of the Compendium of Practices on the implementation of ICT questions in household and business surveys
3. To discuss and analyze the revised list of ICT core indicators for measuring the Information Society
4. To present the ITU Manual on ICT Households Statistics and the revised UNCTAD Manual for the Production of Information EconomyStatistics
5. To agree on next steps in the process of elaborating new indicators that allow the monitoring of eLAC2010 goals
6. To discuss the importance of harmonized indicators for the development of public policies and to review practical examples from countries
7. To plan the future activities of the group, including relevant work in order to monitor advances towards Latin American and Caribbean information societies.

Attendance to the workshop is by invitation only.