Defenestrated

Vodafone - down but definitey not out

The Register echos a report in The Times (of London) that Vodafone is glad it lost the bidding for AT&T Wireless. It seemed strange to me that Cingular would pay $41bn for a company that's clearly been struggling for some time. This report seems to give credence to that concern, citing figures that suggest AT&TW is only worth about $12bn, on a good day.

Get secure or lose your cash

OMB is demanding that 18 agencies beef up their security or lose funding for development projects in 2005.

As a vendor of development services, this alarms me enormously. But, at the same time, it's heartening to see Karen Evans (and OMB) taking a position that is so drastically unpopular. It shows that, at its heart, OMB doesn't intend on being the nice guy that Mark Forman seemed to be!

Europe moves e-gov onward

In another report from the UK's Government Computing, the European Commission has identified six new e-gov projects and will begin work on them this year. The contracts will be worth €9.5m and will be awarded this year.

Of note, however, is the review of e-government due to be completed in August this year and which will result in a new program, the IDABC (Interoperable Delivery of pan-European e-Government Services to Public Administrations Businesses and Citizens). This is another example of the move towards i-gov -- cross-border integration of electronic government services. The more I read about this, the more it makes perfect sense,

Gershon 'apoplectic'

According to the UK's Government Computing weekly e-mail, Sir Peter Gershon was "apoplectic" about the leak of his report regarding the radical overhaul of how government does business, which . Seems like news of this sort does make it out of Whitehall with disarming ease.

Canada e-gov: a road 2/3 travelled

Canada is four years into their six year Government On-line plan and now the most difficult tasks remain. Seems like the normal way of doing things: do the easier stuff first and worry about the rest later. Having said that, at least the Canadian government is aware of this and is preparing itself for the consequence: another $1.1 billion to be expended on top of the $880 million already out the door.

UK considers e-gov cost savings

People in the UK should compulsorily use electronic forms to do business with the government, says Sir Peter Gershon, head of the Office of Government Commerce in a new report on public services reform. The Financial Times reports that Sir Peter's report, in which he also recommends the elimination of 80,000 jobs in the public sector, states that those who are 'e-capable' (young people, students, businesses, intermediaries (such as accountants) and higher tax payers) should only use electronic means to interact with the government. Call centers and other "offline" methods of doing business should only be employed as a second course.

This is an excellent ambition. And while it's true that the UK has a high penetration of broadband access, it's still badly behind many comparable nations and many UK citizens have no hope of getting it any time soon, either because of prohibitive costs or a lack of availability. (Thanks go to BT for the latter. Again.) A further problem is what I consider a lack of cultural acceptance of electronic business in the UK.

The Two Ronnies!

One of the best British comedy duos, The Two Ronnies, are making a comeback! The BBC has announced that Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett will be writing new material for a series to be aired next year.

IBM to launch Office on Linux

InfoWorld reported yesterday that IBM intends to migrate Microsoft Office to Linux. This is audacious and incredibly smart...if it's true, and possible at all

It could seem quite an odd initiative, as OpenOffice/StarOffice are both maturing well and are largely compatible with MSOffice.

That said, OO/SO are different to MSOffice. There's no getting away from the fact that they're not MSOffice. In fact, they're stridently different to Microsoft's product. And therein lies the rub.

OO.org in libraries

The Guardian reported on chap in Scotland who has spent £5,000 of his own money to distribute CDs of OpenOffice to libraries around the country. Seems like this practice is spreading, too.

In the past few days, I've seen three stories about open source creating new business models and increasing social inclusion. Many of these have come from the UK where -- maybe, finally -- the tide is turning towards open source as a real-world alternative to packaged product.

i-gov

Today I had lunch with a very interesting man called Frank (whose full name I won't reveal, lest he prefer otherwise) who has just started a new blog, i-Gov: Progress of electronic government (e-gov). The central notion of the blog is that the era of e-Gov is over or, at the very least, losing momentum. The new era is 'integrated government' (i-Gov), in which horizontal and vertical integration of central, state, and local governments begins delivering the long sought-after benefits of e-Gov.

I agree with Frank's assertion. e-Gov is becoming more of a burden to agency heads than an exciting initiative that will liberate data from stovepipe applications. With that loss of excitement there's an inevitable loss of enthusiasm and momentum, which results in e-Gov being perceived as yet another OMB mandate without any real purpose.