One of the recommendations of the National ICT Strategic Plan (NICTSP) 2007-11 is the definition of indicators which are essential for setting policy priorities, measuring progress towards targets, and benchmarking results. Thus, indicators can be viewed as having a definitional function in terms of setting the parameters of the problem to be addressed. The decision of which indicators are important to collect provides evidence of what is being valued. The definition, design and measurement underlying indicators must be effected in reference to how they are intended to be used.

A National ICT Indicator Taskforce, as recommended in the NICTSP report, was set up by the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology to come up with a definition of the indicators for the ICT sector (including a definition of the ICT Sector). The Task Force adopted the definition at the level of international organisations such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), UNESCO and Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry (DSTI) Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policy when developing the indicators.

The ICT Indicators Task Force approved an ICT Indicators Definition Report in 2009 comprising 147 indicators and which were classified under 7 broad categories. However in view to stay up-to-date and be in line with international standards a series of indicators have been reviewed and re-aligned with standards defined by the international bodies mentioned earlier. In addition 3 more categories of indicators have been included.

In this context the National Computer Board (NCB) came up with a revised ICT Indicators Definition Report in 2012 and which have been approved by all the data collection agencies. The 2012 Report defines a total of 182 indicators classified under following 10 broad categories.