Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards Productive

of the Arab countries and suffer frommany shortcomings when applied to thesecountries. The most important of thesefollow.• Certain dimensions of knowledgedeemed significant with respect to theArab countries, such as the arts, culture,literature, and translation, are not partof the indicators and indices of theknowledge economy.• The knowledge economy indicatorsconcentrate on the quantitative anddo not lend sufficient importanceto the qualitative. The educationindicators, for example, concentrateon the numbers of students enrolledin education but do not deal with thequalitative requirements of educationin terms of qualified teachers, purposebuiltbuildings and science labs, thesuitability of curricula and the extentof their implementation, and the fitbetween the specialisations of graduatesand the requirements of the knowledgeeconomy.• Many of the indicators pay attentionto the provision of the inputs andenvironments required to achieveknowledge, but not to its outputs. Thatis, they are biased towards the supplyside in terms of the requirement forachieving the knowledge society anddo not devote enough attention to thesocial and economic fruits of knowledgeand to other aspects that are reflectedin the life of society. Provision of ICTequipment and infrastructure, such astelephones, computers, the internet,and television, does not necessarilymean that these will contribute to thegeneration of knowledge. Indeed theymay encourage time-wasting in futileactivities at the expense of those relatedto knowledge. Similarly, increasedresearch and development does notnecessarily imply that the latter is putto use for the generation of economicreturns and benefits to society.• Some indicators included within theKnowledge Assessment Methodologydo not express the variable targeted formeasurement. For example, the indicatoron the number of patents granted bythe US Patent and Trademark Officedoes not express the actual numberof patents, because it does not includepatents granted by national patent andtrademark offices or by internationaloffices outside the US.STATISTICAL DATA ONKNOWLEDGE IN THE ARABCOUNTRIESThe data related to knowledge indicators inthe Arab countries very often suffer fromgaps, inaccuracy, datedness, or irrelevence.These shortcomings in the data make itimpossible or difficult to make accuratecomparisons, to identify the factors linkedto the points of strength and weakness inthe state of knowledge, and to perform indepthand in-detail analyses. These negativeeffects are particularly concentrated in theindices and countries which suffer to ahigh degree from the scarcity or datednessof the available data or from its weakcapacity to express what is to be measured,while at the same time these very indicesand countries are the ones most in need ofdevelopment based on accurate statisticalmeasurement and analysis.The importance of statistical data inrelation to knowledge is not limited to thepurposes of measurement and analysis forwhich they have been used in this report.Rather, these data form one of the majorelements of knowledge, particularly inthose areas susceptible to quantitativeassessment, such as the economy,sociology, medicine, and engineering, sinceit plays a vital role in coming to know andanalyse reality, in predicting the future, andin decision-making.AVAILABILITY OFKNOWLEDGE DATA FOR THEARAB COUNTRIESTo become familiar with the scope ofknowledge data available in the Arabcountries, we will use here the data of theANNEX 3. MEASUREMENT OF THE ARAB COUNTRIES’ KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY263