Abstract

A requirement to an information-technology (IT) driven data collection scheme for a survey is that the respondent has access to the basic hardware and software. Inquiries from the Survey of Key Enterprises in Manufacturing (SKEM) respondents revealed that 84 percent had a personal computer, from which half had a modem and a little more than one-third subscribed to an Internet service provider. A procedural flow chart of the IT-driven data retrieval and dissemination depicts these recommendations: (a) the standard physical shuttling of the monthly SKEM questionnaire would have to be continued for some establishments; (b) a “diskettized” questionnaire could be implemented for some samples; (c) the Internet can be explored as a medium for data retrieval and dissemination either in the form of the simple e-mail technology or the web-page technology; and (d) if there are different data retrieval procedures then the processing systems design would have to take this into account. Still for piloting is the developed “diskettized” and e-mail version of the questionnaire for the Monthly Survey of Selected Industries (MISSI) which had replaced the SKEM during the time of this project’s implementation. Release of survey results was illustrated through a prototype Home Page on the World Wide Web. The computer-based technology can be expanded to the quarterly and annual surveys and the census of establishments.