China has set up a national enterprise informatization quotient (EIQ) system to measure the improvement of efficiency in firms after they adopt information technology in their operations. The EIQ system was unveiled yesterday by the National informatization Evaluation Center (NIEC) under the Ministry of Information Industry.
It aims to help enterprises pay more attention to the advantages of IT systems for specific operations, rather than blindly believing that large investment naturally means large benefits.
"It is wrong that businesses only care about how much they invest," said Li Chunhua, director-general of the Department of Technological Progress and Equipment with the State Economic and Trade Commission (SETC), at the China Enterprise Informatization Quotient System Forum held yesterday in Beijing.
She believes the EIQ system will help curb blind IT infrastructure construction and allow enterprises to gauge IT levels in the industry.
The EIQ emphasizes efficiency and those factors that influence it, such as the relevance of informatization strategy to the whole corporate strategy, the relevancy of the scale of databank to the scale of enterprises, and the relevancy of the breakup of IT spending to the businesses of enterprises.
The system also includes other traditional measurements such as the proportion of IT spending in enterprises' fixed assets investment, the number of computers per 100 staff members and the development of the Internet and Intranet in businesses.
According to Jiang Qiping, deputy director of NIEC, his organization will select pilot enterprises from about 40 industrial sectors countrywide within one year to set examples for other enterprises.
Li Chunhua with SETC also said her commission may use the evaluation results of NIEC as a reference when deciding which enterprises are active in technological upgrading and will get funds from SETC.
(China Daily October 10, 2002)
