Rialtas.net – Government 2.0

An interesting post by Tim O’Brien at O’Reilly Radar highlighting that earlier this month Google introduced a feature called Rich Snippets which provides users with a convenient summary of a search result at a glance. They have been experimenting with microformats and RDFa, and are officially introducing the feature and allowing more sites to participate. [...]

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Interesting article by Mike Elgan (Earthweb) on an effort by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members to “assert supremacy over online public opinion, raise the level and study the art of online guidance and actively use new technologies to increase the strength of positive propaganda”.
The article also introduced me to the concept of astroturfing which I [...]

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The EU Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes, publicly supported the use of open source software in eGovernment, in a public speech at a seminar hosted by OpenForum Europe in Brussels on 10 June 2008.
The Commission must do its part. It must not rely on one vendor, it must not accept closed standards, and it must refuse [...]

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On 10th June the World Wide Web Consortium launched a new forum aimed at discovering how technology can best be used to improve both governance and citizen participation.

 
The group is open to governments, citizens, researchers, and any interested parties.

“Open Standards, and in particular Semantic Web Standards, can help lower the cost of government, [...]

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Tom Watson MP Minister for Transformational Government, Cabinet Office
Below is an excerpt from the speech he gave at the Tower ‘08 conference on 10th March 2008.
You are all in this room today because you “get it”.
You know that the way that government configures public services is going to change beyond comprehension in years to come [...]

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Photo By Jrawle from Flickr.
Interesting Series of blog entries and comments debating as to whether Civil Servant Bloggers in the UK should be governed by a set of blogging guidelines or whether adherence to the UK civil service code should be sufficient. This was all prompted by the recent posts of an anonymous blogger [...]

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Computerworld Blog Post by Mary Brandel Framingham on the necessity for CIO’s to take on Web 2.0
“There are kids coming out of school who can run circles around IT in terms of Web 2.0 technology,” Hayes says. “That makes it important to become more business-oriented so that we don’t become hindrances to getting business done.”
Gartner [...]

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I Just came across this document on the Data Protection Commissioners website. Its a projected vision of public surveillance in the near future, a dsytopian one as far as individual privacy is concerned. Thought provoking and worth a read.
A Report on the Surveillance SocietyFor the Information Commissioner, by the Surveillance Studies Network
Public Discussion [...]

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I was hoping to have had a chance to finish reading this report before I posted it but decided to post it now in case anyone find it useful. It a report commissioned by the Australian QLD government entitled, ‘Legal Aspects of Web 2.0 Activities: Management of Legal Risk Associated with Use of YouTube, [...]

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Just thought I would draw attention to New Zealand’s E-Government Website
http://www.e.govt.nz/
The site is a resource for government agency people in New Zealand who need up-to-date, easily accessible and authoritative e-government information & resources to assist them to achieve their agency’s e-government goals.
The e-government goals:

By 2007, information and communication technologies will [...]

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