USA: Utah Encourages College Students to Use TaxExpress to File Their Taxes Online
Thanks to a number of recent improvements, Utah's TaxExpress Internet-based filing service for individual state income tax returns is now available to approximately half of the state's population, including college students.
USA: Maine: Online government services second to only one
EU will Amtswege im Internet attraktiver für Bürger machen
Die EU-Staaten wollen ihre Bürger durch attraktivere und grenzüberschreitende Dienste stärker für die Erledigung ihrer Verwaltungsangelegenheiten begeistern. Dies betonten EU-Medienkommissarin Viviane Reding und Medien-Staatssekretär Franz Morak (V) bei einer gemeinsamen Pressekonferenz am Freitag in Wien. Über das Internet sollen Amtswege wie Steuererklärungen oder Anträge "schnell und unbürokratisch" möglich sein, sagte Morak. Reding unterstrich, dass die Internet-Technologie für die Bürger da sein soll und nicht nur für Unternehmen.
Technology for a healthy Ireland
A great deal of ink and airtime have already been devoted to the Health Service Executive's Personnel, Payroll and Related Systems (PPARs) project, which cost the taxpayer somewhere between EUR130 million and EUR195 million (depending on who you ask), compared to the EUR9 million budgeted for the project. More recently, it was revealed that the Health Service Executive had in 2005 spent EUR56.4 million more than was originally thought. It's also true that the dust has not yet settled on either matter; the Department of Health and all of the agencies under its remit will now face intense scrutiny when it comes to all new projects, especially IT projects.
E-government: who controls the controllers?
Since 11 September 2001, western states have started a complex process of technological restyling of their systems of control and crime prevention. It's a process that exploits advanced information technologies with the aim of protecting citizens' lives and state sovereignty from worldwide threats such as terrorism. The hidden and dangerous implications of this process for these citizens' civil rights have largely gone unnoticed – or, when noticed, have been considered as a small prize to pay for the notional "safety" the process brings. Citing a coomon, popular phrase, some critics have rightly pointed out that, naively and rather wrongly, people tend to conclude that: "if you are neither a terrorist nor a criminal, you have nothing to worry about".