Information Policy

ICT park to save Nigeria $5billion

By ADLINE ATILI

Managing Director of the Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited (NIGCOMSAT), Tiamasaniyu Ahmed-Rufai, has advocated the use of the recently launched satellite, NigComSat-1R to achieve the ‘Electronic Park’ (e-Park) project and other Information and Communications Technology (ICT) initiatives of the Federal Government.

Ahmed-Rufai said the e- Park, a proposition of the Ministry of Communications Technology to serve as a skills acquisition and ICT training centre for youths, would save the country $5billion yearly, derivable from the penetration of indigenous software products and services.

Speaking at an ICT workshop organised by the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) in Abuja, the NIGCOMSAT boss described the replaced satellite as the cornerstone for universal access and bedrock for ICT development, backbone for sociopolitical and economic re-engineering of Nigeria and Africa.

He said: “The reality of the 21st century is the pervasiveness of ICT in all sphere of human life.  Modern technology today has presented a new and better way of operations in all ramifications.”

The ‘e-Park’ project, he explained, targets creation of two million IT professionals to be pooled from the 774 local government areas in the country within five years.

Among other projects the NigComSat-1R would support, according to Ahmed-Rufai, include the e-Library project expected to take off in June, and the Secondary School NET project, aimed at facilitating access to electronic education. This is in addition to the National Integration Community Service Centre (NICISC) project aimed at facilitating the establishment of electronic public information centres across the country.

http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/business/infotech/37577-ict-park-to-save-nigeria-5billion.html

Albanian PM on E-government: Saves Time and Offers Transparency

Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha declared on Tuesday that digitalization is a vital process that will help transform Albania into a developed country, contribute to its integration in the European Union and as being one of the most efficient efforts in fighting corruption.

The declaration was made during a national conference on information technology, which focused on the improvement of public services for citizens and businesses through e-government. Berisha said that e-government has proven itself in saving time, reducing costs and bureaucracies and also decreasing corruption. The EU is financing a Euro 3.2 million project for the improvement of e-government in Albania.

http://www.balkans.com/open-news.php?uniquenumber=136668

Finland has largest share of economy based on information technology – UN

Finland has the world’s largest portion of domestic economic activities related to information and communication technology, with almost a tenth of the European country’s non-agricultural business workforce employed in the ICT sector, according to United Nations data released today.

The data, released by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, also shows that the ICT sector is still in its infancy in many developing economies.

The UNCTAD database currently contains information on 57 economies. The lack of more comprehensive data can be seen as yet another illustration of the digital divide, the agency said in a press release.

None of the countries classified as among the world’s least developed countries (LDCs) report statistics on the size of their ICT sectors, UNCTAD points out.

Based on the latest available data, the proportion of ICT-sector employment in all business sectors ranges from less than two per cent in Azerbaijan, Croatia and Kazakhstan to more than eight per cent in Finland, Israel and Sweden.

The ICT sector is playing a growing role in a number of developing countries, according to UNCTAD. In India, for example, the contribution of the ICT sector to gross domestic product (GDP) rose from 3.4 per cent in 2000-01 to 5.9 per cent in 2007-08.

In Kenya, the sector has expanded annually by more than 20 per cent over the past decade and accounted for a staggering 24 per cent of the country’s GDP growth during that period.

The ICT sector has an impact on governments, companies, individuals and society at large, creating jobs, spurring innovation and supporting the sustained use of ICTs in domestic economies, resulting in increased productivity and efficiency.

Jobs in ICT have proved to be more productive than those in other sectors, according to UNCTAD.

In the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), between 1995 and 2008, labour productivity grew faster in the ICT sector than in the rest of the business sector.

The sector’s contribution to domestic economies is typically higher in terms of value added than in jobs. However, it employs relatively younger people with above-average levels of education, making it possible for them to have upward mobility, job security, and future training opportunities.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=41247&Cr=unctad&Cr1

Estonians Among Most Active Internet Users in Europe

It appears from a Eurobarometer study that Estonian citizens are considerably more active users of the internet and of social networks than citizens of other European countries. Sixty percent of Estonian citizens used the internet daily or almost daily and 31% used social networks. In Europe the respective indicators were 48% for daily use of the internet and 20% for the use of social networks.

The most frequent users of the internet are citizens of Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark, where 80% of the citizens use the internet daily or almost daily. Social networks are also used the most frequently in those countries, particularly in Iceland, where 54% of the citizens use social networks daily or almost daily.

The highest percentage of very high media consumption citizens live on Iceland (82%) and in Sweden (79%). Estonia is in seventh place in terms of active media users. The percentage of very active media users is 53% and that of active ones 36%. The greatest number of low or very low media consumption citizens live in Portugal (54%) and Romania (53%).

Of media types European citizens prefer to view television, with 84% of Estonian citizens doing it daily or almost daily and 87% of citizens of Europe doing in daily. Radio falls into second place, with 67% of Estonian citizens and 51% of European citizens listening to it daily or almost daily.

The study was carried out last year in the period from 5-20 November in the 27 member countries of the European Union, in five candidate countries, and in North Cyprus.

http://www.eesti.ca/?op=article&articleid=35161

EU IT Companies to Get Guidance on Human Rights Issues

By Jennifer Baker, IDG News

Just as European surveillance and mobile-message filtering companies come under increasing pressure to safeguard human rights, two Irish companies have been reported as selling tech to the Syrian regime that is being used to thwart civil rights protesters.

The European Commission announced a year-long project to develop sector-specific guidance on the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, saying that the IT sector could benefit from targeted advice. The IT sector was selected, along with employment and recruitment agencies, and the oil and gas industry, by the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB).

The guidance developed through this project will be based on the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and is due to be completed by the end of 2012.

The commissioner responsible for the Digital Agenda in Europe, Neelie Kroes, said this process will make it easier for makers and users of IT products and services to understand the impact their technology has on human rights across the world.

"Public and private actors cannot ignore their responsibilities. If western technology is being used by repressive governments to identify innocent citizens and put their life or freedom in danger, then I think we -- manufacturers, suppliers, citizens and democratic governments -- ought to know," said Kroes.

"I am clear that any action taken needs to have strong industry involvement. This reflects the strong industry interest in getting this right -- given that being found to provide the tools of repression is (even leaving aside any moral issues) extremely bad corporate PR," she added.

Meanwhile, bad PR is what Irish tech companies Cellusys and AdaptiveMobile found themselves dealing with on Wednesday, after news was broken by Bloomberg that they had supplied technology to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Cellusys and AdaptiveMobile, both based in Dublin, make text message management and filtering systems that are allegedly being used by Syrian authorities to block human rights protesters' text messages when they contain politically sensitive terms such as "revolution" or "demonstration."

Human rights groups have criticized the companies, saying they were irresponsible in selling filtering technology to Syria. However, Cellusys CEO Dawood Ghalaieny is reported as saying his company is not responsible for what happens with the technology after it is sold. "Once they have the systems, they control it," he said, according to Bloomberg. Cellusys products are designed to keep mobile networks free from spam and viruses, he added.

AdaptiveMobile, meanwhile, said that it has never provided services to the Syrian government. It did sell a standard SMS spam and MMS antivirus product to MTN Syria (Syria's second largest mobile phone operator) in 2008. But "given the changing political situation in the region," AdaptiveMobile decided not to renew the contract expired when it expired last year.

Last month, Dutch Green party MP Arjan el Fassed called for a law to outright ban the sales of surveillance technology to countries that violate human rights and asked Netherlands-based surveillance companies Group 2000 and Digivox which countries they sell to.

Dutch member of the European Parliament Marietje Schaake has also called for tough rules for the whole European Union. "We cannot just trust [technology companies] on their good intentions because businesses are in the business of making money. And sometimes this is at the expense of any respect for human rights," she said.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/250038/eu_it_companies_to_get_guidance_on_human_rights_issues.html

European Commission welcomes step forward for wireless broadband with adoption of Radio Spectrum Policy Programme

Radio spectrum supports 3.5 million jobs and more than €250 billion of economic activity each year in Europe, including incredibly popular services such as wireless broadband. The Commission therefore welcomes the European Parliament's adoption of the five-year Radio Spectrum Policy Programme (RSPP) which will allow sufficient spectrum to be made available for wireless applications and services such as high speed 4th generation (4G) wireless broadband. The RSPP also supports entertainment/culture (mobile TV or wireless electronic books), transport systems, health (such as medical appliances and devices to assist disabled persons), research, civil protection, the environment and energy (including smart energy grids and smart metering systems), without affecting the requirements of other policies such as defence.

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/12/141&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

China To Increase Regulation Of Internet

The Chinese government intends to regulate and continue censoring social networking sites on the mainland for the foreseeable future, the Communist Party and the State Council’s said about its revised outline for China’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) on Cultural Reform and Development.

The outline said the Chinese government will increase regulation of sites like RenRen (RENN) and microblogging services, and also strengthen its crackdown on online distribution of pornography. It did not name specific company names, but RenRen and the Sina microblogging site Weibo.com are some of the most popular websites in China.

Increasing attention will be placed upon protecting private information online and improving the country’s system to assess online security, according to the outline.

Censorship and tight regulation will likely keep big name U.S. companies like Twitter and Facebook in Hong Kong rather than in Shanghai on the mainland. That bodes well from a competition standpoint for names like SINA Corporation (SINA) and even Baidu (BIDU), the Chinese search engine behemoth, but not for matters of free speech in Chinese cyberspace.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/02/15/china-to-increase-regulation-of-internet/

Britain's position on Internet freedom not absolutist: Minister

Jeremy Browne sees scope for U.K., India to see world through similar eyes

While Britain is taking a strong leadership role in the world in arguing for Internet freedom, its position on the widely-debated issue is not an absolutist one, Jeremy Browne, UK Minister for Foreign affairs said on Tuesday.

Participating in an interactive session with business leaders under the auspices of the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI), Mr. Browne said while the UK quite emphatically stood for an open society and freedom of speech and expression, there were also areas where there could be competing freedoms such as one's right to privacy against the other's right to know.

While the assumption that the individual is sovereign and that the State is a servant of the people and not the other way around was a core belief of an open society, there was also the potential for the ability to communicate (on the Internet) to be used in malign ways such as paedophiles misusing social media to snare children, he said.

“There are parameters but I think when we're discussing them we start with the freedom of expression at the near end of the scale,” he said.

Mr. Browne, who felt that the Internet and social media were a great force for good, cited the Arab world where there were curbs on individual freedoms to argue that the most likely way that the people there would become free over time would be not through the intervention of the United Nations or the signing of treaties, but through millions of people using their shared knowledge at the grassroots level to bring about social change in a bottom-up rather than top-down movement.

Replying to a question on the UK's increasing friction with Iran, Mr. Browne said the UK had “very severe problems” with the Iranian regime for sponsoring terrorism and abusing human rights. And, although the UK had no problems with Iran producing nuclear power for civilian use, it could not risk a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, “which was already the most unstable part of the world.”

Stressing the need to build broad coalitions of support based on shared values in a changing world order, Mr. Browne noted that India was a strong ally in this regard, shared common ground with the UK on democracy, free speech, trade relations, wealth creation, cultural and sporting links and made it potentially possible for “Britain and India to see the world through similar eyes.”

According to the UK Minister, Britain's Foreign Office had clubbed India along with China and Brazil instead of viewing it merely in regional context and the UK diplomatic mission in India would shortly scale up its presence across more cities and with more staff.

Whether setting a target for doubling bilateral trade by 2015 or urging India to push for an open environment for trade and investment similar to how the UK had welcomed Indian giants into its automotive and steel, Mr. Browne refrained from limiting the UK-India relationship to a purely economic domain. In fact, Britain's forthright support for a permanent seat for India in the UN Security Council stemmed from a wish to see that India was properly represented on the international stage, he said.

“Our two nations do not always agree on matters of foreign policy but we both place supreme importance on the architecture of global governance. If institutions like the UN are to retain their legitimacy, they must be representative of global distributions of power and influence,” Mr. Browne said.

Mike Nithavrianakis, British Deputy High Commissioner for Southern India, T. Shivaraman, MCCI vice-president and K. Saraswathi, MCCI secretary-general participated.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/tamil-nadu/article2893850.ece

India will never censor social media - Sibal

No Indian government will ever censor social media, Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said, seeking to calm fears of a China-style crackdown on companies like Google and Facebook.

A court last year ordered 21 companies including Google and Facebook to block material from their websites that could offend religious groups, arousing concerns about freedom of speech in the world's biggest democracy.

"We have never had any intention nor did we ever say we are going to censor social media, but we do believe that all media must obey the laws of this country," Sibal told reporters on Tuesday.

Sibal and other Indian government officials have previously denied that they were promoting censorship of the Internet.

The controversy centres on a law passed last year that makes companies responsible for content posted by users on their sites and giving them 36 hours to remove it if someone complains.

The new law has led to two cases being brought by individuals against internet companies.

Despite the new rules to block offensive content, access to the Internet in India is still largely uncensored, in contrast to the tight controls in neighbouring China.

But like many other governments around the world, India has become increasingly nervous about the power of social media.

Google Inc (GOOG.O), Facebook, Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) are awaiting a Delhi High Court ruling on their appeal against a criminal case brought by journalist Vinay Rai related to content on their websites.

The sitting judge said in January that companies were responsible for content on their websites and that he could block sites "like China" if they did not get their house in order.

Sibal said the government had nothing to do with the case.

"It is between the complainant and those who have been called," said the minister, who was speaking at an event organised by NASSCOM, an industry body for information technology companies.

Fewer than one in 10 of India's 1.2 billion people have access to the Internet, but that still makes it the third-biggest internet market after China and the United States.

The number of internet users in India is expected to almost triple to 300 million over the next three years.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/02/14/sibal-no-censorship-on-social-media-idINDEE81D04G20120214

SOPA and the Future of Internet Governance

So what was all that fuss about?  SOPA, PIPA, Internet Blackout Day, front page stories in newspapers all across the country, eight million or so emails pouring into the White House, two million #sopa tweets, and 10 million signatures added to online petitions opposing the bills—followed, of course, by the announcement that these various legislative proposals for combating online copyright and trademark infringement had all been taken off the table “for further study.”