Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1322 of 4 July 2025 specifying the technical items of the data set, establishing the technical formats for transmission of information and specifying the arrangements and content of the quality reports on the organisation of a sample survey in the use of information and communication technologies domain for reference year 2026 pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council

This Regulation specifies the technical items of the data set, establishes the technical formats for the transmission of information from Member States to the Commission (Eurostat) and specifies the detailed arrangements for transmission and content of the quality reports in the use of information and communication technologies domain.

For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions shall apply: (1) ‘fieldwork period’ means the period of time during which the data collection from respondents is conducted; (2) ‘reference period’ means the period of time to which a particular item of information relates; (3) ‘Single Entry Point’ means the common reception area for statistical data transmitted to the Commission (Eurostat).

The technical characteristics of variables, laid down in the Annex, shall refer to: (a) variable identifier; (b) variable name and description; (c) codes and labels; (d) filter; (e) variable type.

1 The target populations in the use of information and communication technologies domain shall be private households on the territory of the Member State and individuals who have their usual residence in the territory of the Member State.

2 For the variables listed in the Annex that concern households, information shall be collected for private households with at least one member aged 16 to 74 residing in the territory of the Member State.

3 For the variables listed in the Annex that concern the individuals, information shall be collected for individuals aged 16 to 74 residing in the territory of the Member State.

4 Information regarding individuals aged under 16 or over 74 may be provided on a voluntary basis.

5 The data collection for the use of information and communication technologies domain shall be carried out for a sample of private households or a sample of persons belonging to private households as observation units.

1 The reference period for collecting statistics on the detailed topic ‘Interaction with public authorities’, set out in the Annex, shall be the three last quarters of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026.

2 For all other detailed topics under topic number 07, ‘Information society participation’, set out in the Annex, the reference period shall be the first quarter of 2026.

3 The time of the first interview shall set the reference date.

For data directly provided by respondents, the fieldwork period shall be the second quarter of 2026.

1 Imputation, modelling or weighting shall be applied to the data where information is missing, invalid or inconsistent.

2 Methods of statistical imputation may be applied where appropriate for variables in the detailed topics ‘Access to ICT’ and ‘Digital skills’, as set out in the Annex.

3 The procedure applied to the data shall preserve the variation and the correlation between variables. Methods that incorporate error components into the imputed values shall be preferable to those that simply impute a predicted value.

4 Methods which take into account the structure or other characteristics of the joint distribution of the variables shall be preferable to the marginal or univariate approach.

1 Member States shall transmit the final data to the Commission (Eurostat) by 5 October 2026.

2 The data shall be transmitted in the form of microdata files, including appropriate weights. The data shall be fully checked and validated before transmission using the statistical data and metadata exchange standard through the Single Entry Point. That data shall comply with the validation rules in accordance with the specification of variables based on the coding and filters as set out in the Annex.

3 Member States shall provide the metadata to the Commission (Eurostat) in the standard metadata structure defined by the Commission (Eurostat) by 5 January 2027. They shall provide it through the Single Entry Point.

1 Member States shall transmit to the Commission (Eurostat) an annual quality report on the use of information and communication technologies domain established in accordance with Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2180 .

2 The annual quality report shall be transmitted to the Commission (Eurostat) in accordance with the technical standards established by the Commission (Eurostat) by 5 January 2027.

3 The annual quality report shall be submitted through the Single Entry Point.

This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.