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The Information and Communication Technology Survey (ICTS) is part of a comprehensive program designed to provide more detailed and timely information on capital investment by nonfarm enterprises. The data also provide facts about trends in capital expenditures useful for identifying business opportunities, product development, and business planning.
The Information and Communication Technology Survey (ICTS), a supplement to the Annual Capital Expenditures Survey (ACES), was created in response to economic data user and policymaker concerns about the lack of available data on e-business infrastructure investment by nonfarm businesses. Rapid changes and advances in information and communication technology (ICT) equipment have resulted in these assets having short useful lives and tendency to be replaced much quicker than other types of equipment. Companies are expensing the full cost of such assets during the current annual period rather than capitalizing the value of the assets and expensing the cost over two or more years. In some cases this is due to the short useful life of the asset, and in other cases it is because companies have varying dollar levels for capitalization.
The ICTS data are an improved source of information for official estimates of the investment component of Gross Domestic Product, and of U.S. capital stock and capital flows. In addition, economists use the data to assess prospects for productivity and economic growth, and businesses use the data to identify market opportunities, develop new products, and establish strategic plans. The 2005 estimates in this report are based on data collected from a sample of 46,009 companies with employees. The sample frame for companies with employees was slightly more than 5.9 million.
Three survey forms (ICT-1(S), ICT-1(M), and ICT-1(L)) were used for the 2005 ICTS. Each company in the sample was sent one of the forms depending on the diversification of their operations. Recipients of these survey forms were asked to provide industry-level data for capitalized and noncapitalized purchases, and operating leases and rental payments for three types of ICT equipment (computers and peripheral equipment; ICT equipment, excluding computers and peripherals; and, electromedical and electro-therapeutic apparatus). In addition, companies were asked to provide industry-level data for capitalized and noncapitalized purchases and payroll for developing software, and noncapitalized software licensing and service/maintenance agreements. Additional detail regarding the ICTS forms and instructions can be found in Appendix C.
In accordance with federal law governing census reports (Title 13 of the United States Code), no data are published that would disclose the operations of an individual establishment or company. Disclosure limitation is the process for protecting the confidentiality of data. A disclosure would occur if someone could use published statistical information to infer the identity or operations of a business that has provided information under a pledge of confidentiality. Disclosure suppression protects the confidentiality of individual businesses’ information by withholding(suppressing) the cell values in tables of aggregate data for cases where only a few businesses are represented or dominate the statistic presented.
The disclosure analysis for the ICTS statistics is performed on each data item. When the estimate for a specific data item cannot be shown without disclosing information for individual companies, the publication of that data item is suppressed. The process of suppression does not change the marginal totals, so the integrity of the data is not adversely affected.
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