New digital city guide for Dublin: Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi), in partnership with Failte Ireland, has launched a digital guide to Dublin city for mobile phones and smartphones. The mobile mapping and information solution, known as OSi StreetSmart, was implemented for the Irish agencies by UK firm Augmentra. The digital guide provides users with detailed street maps and information on hundreds of attractions and places to visit in Dublin, including museums, historic buildings, gardens, parks and visitor attractions. Each place of interest includes a phone number with a 'click-to-call' option, address and description. Users also have the option to access photos and extra information on each attraction and to download new attractions, as well as to upload photos and comments of their own using the guide's Information Exchange platform. "The mobile consumer -- whether a tourist, business traveller or Dublin resident -- now has a powerful and convenient city guide and one who's information is continually updated," said Hugh Mangan, product development manager at OSi. The OSi StreetSmart guide is available from www.irishmaps.ie and OSi map retailers for EUR29.99.
Ireland to introduce digital fingerprinting: Irish law enforcement agencies have signed an EUR18 million deal to introduce digital fingerprinting technology. The Director General of the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service and the Commissioner of An Garda Siochana signed a contract with an international consortium to design and implement a new integrated electronic fingerprint system for use by police and immigration services. The supplier of the technology -- which will be phased in over the next 18 months -- is a group led by business consultancy Accenture, along with Motorola and Daon Biometric Systems. The new fingerprinting system will be phased in to replace the existing system used by the Garda Technical Bureau. It will also be used to automate the manual fingerprinting system for applicants to the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner. Subsequent phases will see an electronic fingerprint capture, matching and storage capability introduced for non-European Economic Area (EEA) nationals on registration with the immigration authorities. For more on this story see ENN.
Irish taxpayers take to the web: Nearly a quarter of a million Irish people opted to file their tax returns electronically this year through the Revenue Commissioner's online service, ROS. A total of 244,114 income tax returns were filed through ROS by the tax deadline of midnight on 16 November, an 18.6 percent increase on last year's 205,000 returns filed online. Over 30,000 returns were filed on the last day alone, and in total 70 percent of all tax returns filed on time were filed online, compared with 65 percent last year. The number of customers choosing to pay their tax online was up 29 percent to 86,000. The total online payment of tax was EUR2.2 billion, a 57 percent increase on last year's figure of EUR1.4 billion. "[The system] works better electronically as users are told when the return has been accepted and there is less chance of a clerical error as the system has built-in calculators," said ROS strategy manager Sean Cosgrove. For more on this story see ENN.
EU approves e-services projects: The European Commission has approved 30 new 'eTEN' projects that will see a range of electronic services rolled out for European citizens and businesses over the next three years. The projects involve the development of e-services in areas including e-government, e-health, e-learning and e-inclusion, and will see investments of EUR140 million being made, of which EUR45 million will come from the eTEN programme. The eTEN programme supports the deployment of public-interest e-services across EU Member States and forms part of the Commission's i2010 plan for an inclusive Information Society. The chosen projects are intended to foster inclusion and to improve public services and quality of life through the use of information and communications technologies. Visit the eTEN website for more information.
Jordan unveils e-gov programme: The Jordanian government has formally launched its e-government programme, according to a report in the Jordan Times. The initiative, expected to cost JOD45 million (around EUR49 million) over the next three years, aims to streamline government processes and bring internet access to rural parts of the country. Launching the project, Minister of Information and Communications Technology Omar Kurdi said there were plans for a portal site that would act as a one-stop shop for government services online. "People won't have to go to two or three ministries in a single day to get their passports renewed -- they can just go online, fill out a form, and the ministries will do the rest. E-government will be citizen-centric and will save all of us time and money," said Kurdi. Under the e-government programme, the ICT ministry plans to install 5,000km of fibre-optic cables and bring broadband to 3,200 public schools, 23 community colleges and around 120 publicly accessible "internet knowledge stations" around the country by the end of 2006.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Sylvia Leatham
Quelle/Source: ElectricNews, 22.11.2006
