Information Policy

A locally-driven “blogging” version of eGovernment

The Wakefield Metropolitan District Council in Yorkshire, UK, has launched a new community website so that local groups and organisations can let people know their news. It is almost a locally-driven 'blogging' version of eGovernment. The initiative gives citizens the opportunity to build, develop and maintain a site for their community group, promoting events, jobs, local news and activities.

Wakefield District Community Online (WDCO) is behind the website www.wdco.org and any group can register on it – provided they accept the terms and conditions - and build their own community website free of charge.

Councillor Peter Loosemore, the Cabinet Member for Community Safety and Neighbourhoods, said: “There are already 33 groups and organisations on the site and we hope that more will sign up. People who have used it have told me that it was really easy to get their site on line. So don’t be put off, even if you’re new to computers.”

The site will provide another way for residents to find out what is happening where they live – it is expected that all sorts of events including village galas, local sport, community meetings, clubs and workshops will be included.

http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/5431/194

Schools to adopt open source subjects

Some 80 universities and colleges in the Philippines will incorporate open source subjects into their computer science (CS) and information technology (IT)-related courses later this year under a program that seeks to help schools develop more employable graduates. A joint project of the Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit, a development arm of the German government; Wireless Services Asia, a private European company; and EITSC of the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, Positive encourages local tertiary-level schools with CS or IT-related subjects to download and use free open source course materials developed by six partner schools.

http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=interactive01_mar27_2006

Europe needs to bridge the digital divide

Europe needs to do more to accelerate the broadband revolution according to a report by the European Commission. The document 'Bridging the Broadband Gap' says that Europe should pull together EU telecoms legislation and structural and rural policy to ensure that the more remote and rural areas of the Union are not left behind in the rush to faster Internet access speeds and associated applications.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/85305/europe-needs-to-bridge-the-digital-divide.html

E-Government Research 'Falls Between Funding Areas'.

E-government research across Europe has been losing out in competition for European Commission research cash because it falls between mainstream funding areas, according to an academic leading a new project to try to correct the problem.

"People are rejecting proposals because they do not fit into 'technical' or 'socio-economic' [categories]. E-government is multidisciplinary," Maria Wimmer, professor of e-government at Koblenz-Landau University in Germany, told E-Government Bulletin.

Wimmer is leading 'eGovRTD2020' (http://www.egovrtd2020.org/), a commission-funded project to survey government IT managers, policymakers, academics and industry representatives on the predicted state of e-government in 2020 in areas such as use of technology, communication with citizens and public sector organisational structure.

The next step, said Wimmer, will be to conduct a 'research gap analysis' to discover which areas require new research, followed by a "roadmap for research" to be presented to the European Commission next year in the project's final report.

"Many countries lack funding for research in e-government," Wimmer said. "Policies are short-sighted and do not look ahead to future developments and needs - we need to change minds; we need to impact policymaking."

The research team is drawn from institutions in Australia, France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Slovenia and the US.

The World Trade Law of Internet Filtering

by Tim Wu

Abstract: In its introduction to problems of trade in internet-based services, this paper focuses on two cases: one a country and one a product. The national study is of China, among the world's more comprehensive internet regulators. China makes for an interesting case because as a condition to accession to the WTO, it agreed to what has been called “radical” reform of its service practices. Yet at the same time China is among the world's more active filterers of internet services. As we shall see, these two positions are in tension, and while WTO law leaves much room for exceptions, some of China's restrictions may not be easily justifiable under the GATS. The second study is of the company Skype, a provider of voice over Internet services. Skype offers free voice telephone services to anyone with an internet connection. As a consequences, incumbent telephony carriers, often state-owned, have a strong competitive interest in preventing Skype from reaching their customers. The instances of Skype blocking in several countries raise interesting trade in services issues.

This paper is meant for two audiences. For those within the world of trade law it clarifies how internet services have leapt beyond what was contemplated in GATS or subsequent telecommunications agreements. The universalization of a network that is a platform for any type of service requires new thinking about how barriers may come about, and how sectoral commitments are interpreted. For those within the world of telecommunications or internet law, this paper introduces the relevance of WTO law to national regulation of internet services. One of the most interesting consequences may be a tempering of what we might call the “Yahoo! Presumption”; that is, the presumption that the burden lies with internet companies to adapt to national legal systems. While still generally true, the tendency in WTO jurisprudence is to put the burden on national governments to justify internet blocking.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=882459