UK's national address register plan falters: The UK government's plans to establish a national address register have been shelved following a breakdown in negotiations among key parties. The proposed National Spatial Address Infrastructure (NSAI), under which each property in the country would be assigned a unique address, was a key element of the UK's e-government plans and essential to proposed projects such as ID cards, electronic conveyancing, and the tracking of criminals. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister revealed that talks had been suspended after a failure to reach agreement on how to implement the proposed infrastructure by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) and the Ordnance Survey. "Given that addressing is a critical piece of infrastructure I hope the parties will continue to consider options to meet the objectives set out in the prospectus we published in May," said Local e-Government Minister Jim Fitzpatrick. Media reports cited geographic information expert Dr Robert Barr of the University of Manchester, who described the news as "the most serious breakdown of the last five years, during which there has been a scandalous waste of public money."
Germany adopts Scottish e-petition system: Germany's Parliament, the Bundestag, has just launched an electronic petitions system that is modelled on a tool used by the Scottish Parliament's Public Petitions Committee. Scotland's ' e-petitioner,', which has been shortlisted for an eEurope award from the European Commission, allows members of the public to raise and sign an electronic version of a petition and to add comments to an online discussion. It also allows individuals and groups to bring their petitions to the attention of the Scottish Parliament. The German initiative comes on the back of close co-operation between Scotland's Public Petitions Committee, the International Teledemocracy Centre (ITC) at Napier University and the Petitions Committee of the German Bundestag. Since its official launch in February 2004, Scotland's e-petition site has had 50 submissions, which collectively have attracted over 21,000 signatures and around 700 discussion comments.
Nortel helps China monitor flood risks: Five water utility companies in China are using technology from communications solutions provider Nortel to monitor flood-prone rivers across the country. The water resource companies say they have set up critical, real-time flood control monitoring and drought relief systems that are based on converged voice, data and multimedia networking solutions from Nortel. China suffers catastrophic flooding each year during the rainy season; floods, typhoons and landslides caused by heavy rains have affected 27 of China's 31 mainland provinces so far this year. "Nortel technology is set to play a key role in protecting the Chinese people against the devastation of seasonal floods and droughts as we work with the water resource utilities of these five flood-susceptible areas to enable new levels of collaboration and real-time information-sharing," said Stephen Tsui, chief operating officer, Greater China, Nortel. The new solutions will also enable improved water resources management and "anytime, anywhere" communications for utilities personnel, Nortel said.
Australia to overhaul IT strategy: The Australian federal government has revealed plans to revamp its internal IT strategy by the end of the year, reports Computerworld.com. Speaking at a conference in Canberra, Special Minister of State Eric Abetz announced a 10-point plan that sets "ambitious goals" for e-government. Among the areas to be addressed are identity management, vendor contracts, and IT skills among public sector workers. Abetz also said the government would work toward providing the public with improved "real-time notification of services", giving the example of exam results delivered by text message to students. The minister also stressed the importance of project management and IT governance for the federal government, noting that new systems would be implemented to keep IT "on time and on budget" and that new investment frameworks would ensure that investment in IT "is money well spent."
Oracle opens e-gov centre of excellence in Malaysia: IT giant Oracle has opened a centre of excellence for e-governance in Cyberjaya, the city known as Malaysia's answer to Silicon Valley, reports the Star Online. Oracle said it would invest MYR10 million (EUR2.14 million) over the next three years in the centre, which will work on developing prototype e-government solutions for the region. The first round of investment will be put towards staffing, hardware and software procurement, and infrastructure for the centre, said Oracle Malaysia country director V.R. Srivatsan, with investment to be made in the future in training and development programmes, activities led by the centre's solutions partners, and support services. Staff at the centre are already working on a number of e-government initiatives, including a number of mobile government solutions and a grievance-management solution to allow members of the public to track the progress of investigations.
Autor: Sylvia Leatham
Quelle: ElectricNews, 31.08.2005
