Information Policy

Lagos Ranked Bottom Of 25 Cities In Use Of ICT

Lagos has been ranked bottom of the world’s largest 25 cities in use of information and communications technology (ICT) to transform the lives of its citizens according to the second edition of the 2011 Networked Society City Index conducted by Ericsson in cooperation with Arthur D. Little management consultancy. The Networked Society City Index is a tool that can help city authorities and decision makers monitor the position and progress of cities along the ICT-development curve. It should be read as the starting point in an open dialogue, rather than the final word on how cities can progress their triple bottom lines. The new study looks at the benefits ICT has enabled in various cities in areas such as health, education, economy, the environment and efficiency, as well as at citizens’ interactions with ICT. The Index ranked 25 of the world’s largest cities according to their ability to transform ICT to social, economic and environmental benefits. The top three cities in the index – Seoul, Singapore and Stockholm- successfully met many social, economic and environmental targets by making extensive investments in ICT with scores of 59, 57 and 56 respectively. London, New York, Paris, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Shanghai and Beijing complete the top 10, while Johannesburg, Karachi and Lagos are at the rear with 11, 10 and 6 scores respectively. According to the study, ICT-based applications such as e-government and smart transport could improve citizens’ lives, helping to overcome common challenges in urban environments. Earlier in 2011 Ericsson and Arthur D. Little presented a Networked Society - city index report that mapped the ICT maturity of 25 of the world’s largest cities to the society benefit created. The overall findings from the first report of the index stated that there was a connection between ICT maturity in cities and triple bottom line development especially from economic and social development. Cities at different stages of ICT maturity were urged to apply different strategies in order to maximise ICT-driven advancement. In this second release, Ericsson now provides the citizen’s view, highlighting the benefits of ICT from the citizen’s perspective in the same major cities world-wide. The rating is based on the ICT maturity scale that was developed in the first release, whilst the benefit rating is now geared at capturing the triple bottom line benefits of ICT to the citizens. This represents the ICT enabled improvements from living in the city and relates to areas such as health, education, economic gains and city efficiency as well as citizen’s ICT behavior that carries environmental improvement. The study also showed that several BRIC cities, such as Sao Paulo and Delhi, have promising initiatives in place to rapidly close the socio-economic gap through multi-stakeholder ICT engagements.

Patrik Regårdh, from Ericsson’s Networked Society Lab noting that it was crucial to analyse the perspective of individual citizens, said “Successful cities excel at attracting ideas, capital and skilled people. Such positive attraction requires constant progress in economic terms, as well as within a social and environmental context.” Director Arthur D. Little, Erik Almqvist, said, “As people get their most basic needs satisfied, attention shifts to e.g., balanced life styles, a rich cultural scene, good transport and transaction facilities, good health also in their senior years, self-fulfillment – for example - in terms of higher education and a clean environment throughout the city. ICT has the potential to improve quality of life in many fields and connectivity itself anytime, anywhere is increasingly regarded as a basic citizen’s right.” For low ICT maturity cities, the overall conclusion from the study is that governments should take an active role to “push” initiatives to improve ICT-literacy in parallel to continued ICT investments. Care should be taken to balance citizen and business needs within the constraints of the environment. For example, the substitution from e.g. bicycling to more private motorised transportation as income rises may be averted by leveraging ICT to improve city public transportation as well substitute transportation needs with telecommuting and teleworking.

It was concluded that citizens and workforce ICT literacy was a key enabler for city benefits from ICT. This is also true from the citizen’s perspective, and is relevant for cities across the ICT maturity index. The challenge for low ICT maturity cities is to learn and get inspiration from those at the top of the ranking to develop into true networked city societies.

http://leadership.ng/nga/articles/9225/2011/11/29/lagos_ranked_bottom_25_cities_use_ict.html

Turkey launches Internet filtering scheme

Turkish Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK) launched the Internet safety scheme on 22 November 2011, as planned, but on a voluntary basis, following the fierce criticism and opposition to the original plans to introduce a mandatory filtering system.

Internet users may sign up with their ISPs for the free of charge filtering system which blocks "objectionable content", being able to choose from three variants: child, family and domestic. When an Internet user wants to choose one of the filtering variants, BTK issues a new user name and password enabling the user's access to the chosen filtering system. The users who want to stop using the Internet filtering can change back to a standard no-filter profile.

Although voluntary, the system still raises concerns, one of them being the supervision of the system by a new committee called Child and Family Profiles Criteria Working Committee which, in the opinion of law professor Yaman Akdeniz of Bilgi University in Istanbul "... does not look independent nor impartial." The professor also believes that the state authorities may be in the position to impose moral values.

More worrying is the fact that the filter blocks not only adult content, but some 130 search terms, including "separatist" content from the PKK and Kurdish rights groups. "I also believe that the Turkish authorities are not only trying to protect children but also adults from the 'so called harmful content '," said Akdeniz.

Moreover, as frequently proven by liberty activists and IT experts, filtering is not a real solution to solve real Internet threats to children. Filters are easy to circumvent, costly and, in most of the case, can lead to blocking innocent content in the process.

State censorship can be easily masked by apparently justified reasons such as threats to family and children. Under the cover of protecting children, governments may try to include political censorship by including on the filtering list words that relate more to political criticism and opposition than to child pornography or terrorism.

http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.23/turkey-launches-filtering-scheme

WordPress readies bloggers to monetize content

Following a partnership with Federated Media, content management system WordPress will launch a service allowing its bloggers to monetize their content. The new WordAds program allows display advertising to integrate with a blogger's content, even if they're not using the WordPress' premium service. "We wanted to approach the ad side in a way that still allows bloggers to focus on editorial and marketing," says WordPress' Jon Burke

http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/29/wordpress-wordads-advertising/

A proposal for EU-wide data protection regulation

A top lawmaker on Tuesday proposed harmonizing European Union privacy rules so that an Internet company could operate across the 27-country bloc as long as its data protection policies had been approved by a single member state. Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission, said unnecessary hurdles created by privacy rules that date to 1995, when the Internet was in its infancy, were costing companies €2.3 billion, or $3.1 billion, a year as regulators in 27 different nations applied their own rules. She said an overhaul of the privacy regulations was crucial to increasing the competitiveness of the European economy to help it surmount the crisis. Ms. Reding said she planned to detail her plans in January in what is expected to be a sweeping overhaul of the 16-year-old Data Protection Directive. Internet companies, which would be most immediately affected by the new rules, have been urging E.U. lawmakers to simplify the existing practice, and mostly welcomed her proposals Tuesday. During a separate speech, Ms. Reding said Tuesday that she wanted to give users of social networks and other Web services greater control by, for example, letting them delete personal data or move it to other sites more easily. Companies like Facebook have generally resisted such proposals, fearing this could undermine the development of services like targeted advertising, which relies on the mining of consumer data.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/a-proposal-for-eu-wide-data-protection-regulation.html?_r=1

Twitter adds team who created privacy tools for activists

Twitter on Monday announced the acquisition of a two-person startup called Whisper Systems, whose technology protected people’s mobile-phone calls and text messages from being obtained by third parties such as governments. Whisper Systems created a suite of services for human-rights activists or other privacy-conscious individuals, which were used by activists during the recent “Arab spring” actions. One piece of software from Whisper Systems, called RedPhone, encrypts people’s voice communications, while another called TextSecure scrambles text messages. A third Whisper service let people download applications from the Android Market without sending private information to the application developers, who sometimes require it. The Whisper Systems acquisition caused concern among some privacy-minded individuals who don’t see how the startup’s services mesh with Twitter’s core function—helping people send public “tweets” or messages of up to 140 characters. Twitter also lets people broadcast tweets to a restricted group of individuals as well as send private “direct messages” to other Twitter users, and it has fought to inform users that the U.S. government was trying to obtain personal information about them.

http://www.ejc.net/media_news/twitter_adds_team_who_created_privacy_tools_for_activists/

Malta: e-government project takes another step

The second phase of the e-government project was ushered in today, with IT Minister Austin Gatt announcing that 56 more government services are now available on line.

Speaking at a press conference, Dr Gatt said the new e-government platform simplified procedures for users and reduced bureaucracy, while making more services available.

The process, he said, would continue with a further 350 services going online next year and a further 400 in the following year. 

93 services were available before today's addition.

Claudio Grech, chairman of Mita, the government's IT agency,  said that now that the most important services were online, the agency had moved to the other services, and a wide range of government application forms were being put online today, including application forms for licences for catering establishments, host families, water supply by bowser, the operation of a motoring school ,childcare facility or a summer school. There are also application forms for various government grants.

Services are available on www.forms.mygov.mt for all those using e-id cards. 

Mr Grech said that the new services also brought in the one-stop stop service in that, with authorisation by the user, once someone applied for, say, a catering licence, related government documents and certificates needed for the processing of the application could be sourced by the responsible authority from the other government departments (as in the case of birth  or VAT certificates or police conduct records), rather than having to be provided by the applicant, thus saving time and money.

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111130/local/egovernment.396233

Ukraine: President signs decrees to reform regulator

The Ukrainian president, Victor Yanukovych, has signed two decrees permitting the restructuring of the country’s telecoms regulator, the National Commission on Communications Regulation (NCCR, or locally the NKRZ). Telecompaper quoting BizLigaNet writes that the first decree allows the liquidation of the regulator in its current form while the second document clears the way for the establishment of a restructured regulator with a wider remit encompassing telecoms and IT.

http://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2011/11/30/president-signs-decrees-to-reform-regulator/

EMT expands LTE footprint

Estonian cellco Eesti Mobiiltelefon (EMT), a subsidiary of Sweden’s TeliaSonera, has announced that it has extended its Long Term Evolution (LTE) network to a number of new locations, as well as having enhanced coverage in the capital Tallinn. The mobile operator has revealed that it is now offering commercial 4G services in Polva, Rapla, Poltsamaa and Elva, as well as Metsakastis, Vaana-Joesuu and Haabneeme in Harju county. Further, as well as extending the coverage area in Tallinn, EMT said that the cities of Tartu and Kohtla-Jarve have also seen network expansions. The cellco meanwhile noted that it expects to have extended its LTE network nationwide by the end of 2016.

As noted in TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, having launched what it claimed was Eastern Europe’s first Long Term Evolution (LTE) test network in February 2010, it was not until August that year that the Estonian Technical Surveillance Authority (ETSA) launched an auction for six frequency blocks in the 2500MHz-2690MHz band with a tender deadline set at 8 December 2010. Subsequently it was confirmed that EMT had bagged not only 2×20MHz of frequency-division duplex (FDD) spectrum but that it had also laid claim to two 20MHz blocks of time-division duplex (TDD) spectrum. As part of its bid, EMT pledged to build 1,950 support stations within six years of the licence’s issue, and confirmed that it would be pursuing an aggressive rollout plan during 2011, with equipment supplied by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Ericsson, while its 4G modems are supplied by Samsung. Within days of the auction finishing, EMT proceeded to launch commercial LTE services in the city centres of Tallinn, Tartu, Kohtla-Jarve, and at IT College of Tallinn University of Technology, consolidating its status as the market pioneer in the process.

http://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2011/11/30/emt-expands-lte-footprint/

Horizon 2020: Commission proposes EUR 80 billion investment in research and innovation, to boost growth and jobs

The European Commission has today presented a package of measures to boost research, innovation and competitiveness in Europe. Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn has announced Horizon 2020, an EUR 80 billion programme for investment in research and innovation. Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou has put forward a Strategic Innovation Agenda for the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), which will receive EUR 2.8 billion of funding under Horizon 2020. In parallel, Vice-President Antonio Tajani has announced a complementary new programme to boost competitiveness and innovation in SMEs, with an additional budget of EUR 2.5 billion. The funding programmes run from 2014 to 2020.

Horizon 2020 : background memo:

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/11/848&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Google Censorship Rising Faster Than Ever

Google is rapidly becoming the internet police in regards to censorship on the internet. Google has complied with nearly two-thirds of the requests for removing content between January and June, according to a recent transparency report. As compared to the previous reporting period this is an huge increase from the lowly forty percent rate.

The report said that there were 757 items to be removed by request and 92 content removal requests from government agencies and courts. The reasons for removal range from allegations of defamation, copyright, privacy, and security. In addition, there are claims that content is unlawful as hate speech and pornography.

Google is mostly protected because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This act provides Google a safe-harbor provision for Internet Service Providers from being held liable for copyright infringement. However, to comply with the act Google must take something down if they receive a take-down notice for something that has been copyrighted.

This places Google in position of being judge, jury and executioner of the law as Google must make a determination of alleged violations of copyright infringement as it pertains to complex issues governed by the Supreme Court in parody cases, such as the Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music.

In that case, Luther Campbell and others in 2 Live Crew composed a song called “Pretty Woman,” a parody of Roy Orbison's famous ballad, “Oh, Pretty Woman.” The Supreme Court reasoned that the opening bass riff is the key to the song's parody, and that the musical notes are the heart of which parody takes aim.

So how is Google, an internet service business, to determine what is parody and what is not a parody in regards to copyright material, except for the fact that they are now the internet police.

http://technorati.com/technology/article/google-censorship-rising-faster-than-ever/