Within the IT industry the view is that the digital economy is the economy. UK GDP for Q1 16 was £453,065m and the IT industry is moving quickly to digitise it with everything from Amazon to ecommerce to Uber.
There clearly exists an opportunity to digitise the huge swathes of the economy. With card and electronic transactions overtaking cash transactions for the first time this week finance is clearly becoming digital.
The reason that the size of the digital economy is difficult to calculate is that digital appears to touch so much of it. It is becoming harder to make a clear line between traditional and digital business.
What Digital Economy minister Ed Vaizey MP believes is that the digital economy spans everything from App makers on Silicon Roundabout to mobile telecom networks. And it is valid point.
Mr Vaizey will present his digital economy bill to Parliament in June, after the EU referendum.
So pervasive is digital that CA Technologies talks about the App driven economy.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS), the body which calculates GDP does not calculate data for the size of the digital economy as part of GDP.
What it does produce is annual data on E-commerce and ICT activity.
The latest stats reveal such information the proportion of UK turnover derived from e-commerce sales. In 2014, including micro businesses, those with less than 10 employees, the percentage of turnover derived from ecommerce sales stood at 17.8%.
Omitting micro businesses, pushed the figure above 20% to 20.1%. This was a slightly up on ecommerce sales recorded in 2013 which was 19.8%.
Between 2008 and 2014, UK e-commerce sales rose from £334.6bn to £573.4bn, excluding micro businesses.
So it is difficult to calculate. Perhaps one way to calculate the true size of the digital economy is to total any transaction or activity for which a commercial element passed through a data centre.
The reality is that it is difficult to think of any aspect of commerce or commercial activity that is not being brought into the digital economy net.
Maybe there’s a Whelk stall in Southend-n-Sea that is cash only but that’s probably about it!
Mr Vaizey will present his digital economy bill to Parliament in June, after the EU referendum.
So pervasive is digital that CA Technologies talks about the App driven economy.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS), the body which calculates GDP does not calculate data for the size of the digital economy as part of GDP.
What it does produce is annual data on E-commerce and ICT activity.
The latest stats reveal such information the proportion of UK turnover derived from e-commerce sales. In 2014, including micro businesses, those with less than 10 employees, the percentage of turnover derived from ecommerce sales stood at 17.8%.
Mr Vaizey will present his digital economy bill to Parliament in June, after the EU referendum.
So pervasive is digital that CA Technologies talks about the App driven economy.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS), the body which calculates GDP does not calculate data for the size of the digital economy as part of GDP.
What it does produce is annual data on E-commerce and ICT activity.
The latest stats reveal such information the proportion of UK turnover derived from e-commerce sales. In 2014, including micro businesses, those with less than 10 employees, the percentage of turnover derived from ecommerce sales stood at 17.8%.
Omitting micro businesses, pushed the figure above 20% to 20.1%. This was a slightly up on ecommerce sales recorded in 2013 which was 19.8%.
Between 2008 and 2014, UK e-commerce sales rose from £334.6bn to £573.4bn, excluding micro businesses.
So it is difficult to calculate. Perhaps one way to calculate the true size of the digital economy is to total any transaction or activity for which a commercial element passed through a data centre.
The reality is that it is difficult to think of any aspect of commerce or commercial activity that is not being brought into the digital economy net.
Maybe there’s a Whelk stall in Southend-n-Sea that is cash only but that’s probably about it!
