CSO Frontier Series outputs may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release.
Learn more about CSO Frontier Series outputs.
According to the OECD Manual, the digital economy incorporates all economic activity reliant on, or significantly enhanced using digital inputs, including digital technologies, digital infrastructure, digital services and data. It refers to all producers and consumers, including government, that are utilising these digital inputs in their economic activities. This frontier publication by CSO aims to capture all economic activity that is digitally ordered and/or digitally delivered. It can be considered as an alternative perspective of the digital economy, by delineating economic activity based on the nature of the transactions rather than the process used to produce it.
In the context of national accounts, Digitally ordered goods and services comprises “the sale or purchase of goods or services, conducted over computer networks by methods specifically designed for the purpose of receiving or placing orders” (OECD). On the other hand, Digitally delivered services comprise “all services that are delivered remotely in an electronic format, using computer networks specifically designed for the purpose”.
While many goods and services are digitally ordered they are not necessarily digitally delivered: E-commerce transactions, airline and hotel reservations can all be digitally ordered despite not being digitally delivered. In addition, there are also a vast number of products that are digitally ordered and digitally delivered, such as movie streaming or online gambling.
The annual structural business surveys (SBS) of manufacturing and of non-financial service enterprises are a major source in the compilation of business statistics and the supply and use tables in Ireland. These tables include a question on the share of turnover that is digitally ordered. This is the starting point for our estimates of digitally ordered products.
To be consistent with the framework on digital supply and use tables, digital ordering is broken down into three categories based on how the order has been placed:
The responses to the SBS questions are combined with more detailed questions on the ICT Enterprise Survey that give information on whether digitally ordered goods and services have been ordered via the company’s website, EDI, or DIP.
The provisional results for 2018, 2019 and 2020 are shown in Tables 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3. For industries where the CSO has not yet gathered information on the digital nature of the orders no estimates have been made and these are marked by two dots (..).
The SBS and ICT surveys do not include questions on digitally delivered services. Table 4.1 in the Handbook on Measuring Digital Trade provides guidance for identifying cross-border services that are likely to be digitally delivered. Based on this classification the exports of products named in Table 4.1 of the Handbook provides a lower bound for services that are digitally delivered, while the total supply of services listed in Table 4.1 are an upper bound. Exports are taken from the CSO’s Use table and total supply from the row totals of the supply table.
Digital products were identified using the OECD Guidelines for Supply- Use tables for the digital economy. This table contains a list of ICT product classifications at 6-digit level (CPC- Central Product Classification) which are considered digital products. The results here are consistent with the domestic supply row total of the supply table, which are sourced from the CSO’s Supply and Use tables.
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