Colombia will measure cybercrime in its Crime Victimization Survey (ECSC 2021)

On January 12nd and 15th, 2021 the Centre of Excellence in Statistical Information on Government, Crime, Victimization and Justice (CoE) participated in two workshops to socialize the 2021 questionnaire of the Colombian Survey on Coexistence and Citizen Security (ECSC). These discussions have been organized by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), a leading actor in the development of the ECSC since 2012.

The new version of the questionnaire includes a module on cybercrime that has been developed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), through the CoE. The module proposes the measurement of 6 criminal behaviours: Cyberbullying, Email and Social Media Hacking, Identity theft/impersonation, Malware and Ransomware. This new tool was approved during the Technical Meeting on Cybercrime of the Latin America and the Caribbean Crime Victimization Survey Initiative (LACSI), organized virtually by the CoE on September 2 and 4.

The new questionnaire has been socialized by DANE with different relevant actors in Colombia: the Ministry of National Defence, the National Police, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies, the National Planning Department, the Attorney General’s Office. Throughout the sessions, these national stakeholders reviewed the questions in the module and discussed the relevance of this new tool for the country’s internal context, especially in these times of widespread access to the Internet, due to COVID-19.

Thanks to the technical assistance of the Centre of Excellence and the support of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Colombia will join the community of countries that measure cybercrime through a Crime Victimization Survey, in a comparable way and in line with international standards. Colombia will test the cybercrime module in a pilot test during the first quarter of the year, before officially including it in its ECSC 2021.

For more information on the approval process of the cybercrime module of the LACSI Initiative, visit: https://bit.ly/3iB2C5z