INTRODUCTION
This release presents information about the incidence of use of information technology (IT) in Australian businesses, as collected by the 2011-12 Business Characteristics Survey (BCS). The BCS has a biennial focus, and as such detailed information on business use of IT is collected every second year.
DATA QUALITY
Data in this release were subject to standard quality assurance processes with additional focus on core business use of IT data items; specifically, placing and receiving orders via the internet, internet commerce income and type of internet connection.
Information about data quality is provided in the Quality Declaration and Explanatory Notes and must be taken into consideration when interpreting the statistics in this release.
CHANGES IN THIS RELEASE
Data on business use of social media and reasons for not having a web presence are presented for the first time in this issue. Additionally, this release includes data related to the extent of business use of IT in businesses processes and reasons for not receiving orders via the internet. These were last collected in the 2005-06 BCS.
STRUCTURE OF THIS RELEASE
There are two components to this release: web based information; and data cubes. The data cubes contain detailed tables for the data used in the tables, graphs and commentary included in the detailed information sections.
FUTURE RELEASES FROM THE 2011-12 BCS
Further estimates from the BCS will be released in Selected Characteristics of Australian Business (cat. no. 8167.0) on 19 September 2013.
INQUIRIES
For further information about these and related Business Characteristics statistics, contact Sue-Ellen Luke on (08) 9360 5226.
Quality Declaration 
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