IfG.CC - The Institute for eGovernment

In my last article in this journal, “Building smart cities and counties with the Infrastructure Act,” I recommended that the funding available from the Infrastructure Act presented an opportunity for U.S. city and county jurisdictions to ramp up their smart city/smart county programs. At that time I noted that historically the U.S. lags far behind the rest of the world in the rankings and the infusion of federal funding could help the U.S. to catch up with jurisdictions internationally. Sadly, a recent analysis of smart city rankings from a variety of sources shows that the U.S. is lagging even further behind than we were a year ago. The most recent rankings released—the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) rankings for 2023—proves the point.

The result of all these grand declarations: Ninety percent of U.S. doctors and more than two-thirds of U.S. hospitals still use paper for patient records.

Over the years, a large number of transformation and mission mode projects have been undertaken by various central ministries and state governments in order to provide quality services to the citizen in a more transparent and efficient manner. These services involve information transaction and processing, and in some cases e-payment services are being offered to the citizens. An increased usage of IT in providing these services has also exposed the government organizations to increased number of sophisticated attacks. It is therefore essential to ensure that disruptions of critical government information systems are contained and managed effectively in order to minimize their impact.

The US has applauded India’s recent support for multi-stakeholder approach on Internet, saying the decision is critical for ensuring the vitality of the World Wide Web.

“Just a few weeks ago, (Indian) Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announced the Government of India’s support for the multi-stakeholder approach at the last Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting,” said Catherine A Novelli, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and Environment, yesterday.

Addressing a meeting of Internet Governance Forum-USA, Novelli said Prasad stressed the idea that multi-stakeholderism should embrace all geographies and societies.

Taking a major step it its bid to recast the country’s urban landscape, the Union Cabinet Wednesday approved Central government spending worth Rs 98,000 crore under two new urban missions over the next five years.

Chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Cabinet cleared the Smart Cities Mission — under which 100 smart cities would be built — and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) for 500 cities with outlays of Rs 48,000 crore and Rs 50,000 crore, respectively.

As a run-up to the Uttar Pradesh Global Investors Summit, the officials of Uttar Pradesh government on Sunday signed an agreement with officials of Austin University to build a ‘smart city of knowledge’ project in the state for an investment amounting to USD 42 billion.

The agreement was signed between the officials of Uttar Pradesh and Austin University, Texas, which included Austin University President Ashraf Al Moustafa.

In the next few months, the state will have a network of over 1.55 lakh post offices with all the electronic services. Currently a customer can avail the e-post facility that provides the facility of transmission of text messages or scanned documents to remote places through email and physical delivery of printouts across 169 e-post centres in the city.

The communications and IT ministry is about to a launch a slew of schemes on December 28 that will search to digitally join rural post offices throughout the nation and allow core banking amenities at 12,000 different post offices.

The ministry will additionally announce a programme to arrange over 1,000 ATMs in three months for the comfort of post workplace financial savings financial institution clients.

Communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will launch the schemes to mark the ‘Good Governance Day’.

Through a collaborative process led by eHI's multi-stakeholder leadership, development of the Blueprint involved nearly 200 organizations representing the many diverse stakeholders in health care, including clinicians, consumers, employers and health care purchasers, IT suppliers, health plans, hospitals and other providers, laboratories, the life sciences industry, pharmacies, public health agencies, and state and regional leaders.

The largest 314 cities in the US are converting to LED, according to the Northeast Group, which projects that the country will invest $8.2bn in street light modernisation over the next decade.

The largest 314 cities in the US (those with over 100,000 residents) are converting to LED streetlights and interest in connected or smart street lights has nearly tripled, according to a report.

The Northeast Group also reports that the US is projected to invest $8.2bn in street light modernisation over the next decade.

Internet2 has gone nationwide across the US.

At its annual member meeting this month, the nonprofit advanced network consortium announced that it had completed its new nationwide network infrastructure, which has an initial capacity of 100Gbps and bandwidth-on-demand capabilities.

The US Department of Homeland Security had previously set an October 2005 deadline for the inclusion of biometric information chips in the passports of European citizens who avail of the Visa Waiver programme. This programme allows people to make short-term visits to the US without a visa. The chips would have included a variety of biological information about the passport holder, such as their fingerprints and retina scans.

Speakers at the recent Micromobility World conference debated the future of smart city tech and whether it’s actually been improving urban mobility, or simply facilitating a growth of the surveillance state.

Nearly a decade into the “smart city” movement, observers from planning, transportation and privacy arenas are turning a critical eye to technology in search of a problem to solve.

Too often, smart city projects end up being “just plain old surveillance,” said Julia Thayne, a founder of Urban Movement Labs who is helping to lead mobility innovation within the office of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Die US-Regierung hat sich gerade in Zeiten schlechter Konjunktur zum Rettungsanker für die geplagte IT-Industrie entwickelt. Der Markt für externe IT-Ausgaben betrug im Jahr 2001 28,9 Mrd. Dollar.