Thursday, April 20, 2006

DIGILIFE | Another challenge to ePrivacy

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the dangers that our increasingly online-lives pose to our privacy.

At the center of this debate is- who else- Google, of course!

Google has your search engine history, and may accordingly know your interests and whether you’re looking for or planning some ‘illegal’ activities.

Gmail, Google’s free email service, uses an engine that studies the content of your email messages, and delivers sponsored links (text advertising) to you based on keywords in your sent and received emails. So, again, Google has access to your emails.

Froogle, a Google shopping service, registers what you shop for.

And now, the latest product will enable Google to know what your schedule is. Imagine that!

It’s called Google Calendar, and it’s a free Web-based calendar application.

Google Calendar allows users to build online calendars that make it possible for specific individuals or groups of people to access all or some of the events listed. The logged-in users can then easily search for and add events to their calendars from within the program or directly off Web sites that are either publishing events using open calendaring standards or which have added a Google Calendar button to their site.

The open standards of Google Calendar enable it to access or share events with a friend's calendar- if you allow it- and import events and schedules from Microsoft Outlook.

That’s not all. Friends or colleagues who have access to this calendar can be notified by email, or even SMS, whenever there’s an update.So, Google are crossing the concepts of social networking- like Friendster- with organizing!

Google’s main challenger in the ‘calendaring’ market is Upcoming.org, a company Yahoo acquired last year. But, if Google puts it’s force behind something, don’t count against it.

So why is Google doing this? For the same reasons it gives you free search and email services: To get your attention, deliver advertising to you (which you may click on, thereby generating revenue for Google), and as a channel to deliver sponsored content and promotions in the future. All of the ads and content you receive are targeted to your interests, and delivered in a subtle way. It’s Google’s recipe for success.

Still, it’s an invasion of privacy, but users allow it to benefit from these services.

Most users will say they’re pleased, but few stop to consider the implications of, for example, a government agency gaining access to a user’s ‘Google records’; whether searches or emails or schedules. They could then be used to mount a case against that user. Isn’t that a worrying notion?

It should be. Watch out what you reveal, and realize that there truly is a catch attached to anything that is free on the Internet.

zanasser@gmail.com

Saturday, April 15, 2006

TECH | eGovernment needs an eOverhaul

The Minister of ICT, Omar Al Kurdi, spoke this week about the eGovernment initiative and admitted to what we have all felt for some time: That it simply hasn’t achieved many of its goals, over the past six years since it was launched.

Contrary to several other e-initiatives, such as the educational initiative which was successful, efforts in eGovernment have suffered from a variety of problems.

Apart from the typically cited issue of the need to re-train employees, and the resistance to change in bureaucratic organizations, other issues emerged.

There’s a lack of a suitable infrastructure, whether in communications or equipment, and the problematic issue of software customization to suit different procedures in different organizations and issues of jurisdiction to determine who leads the change.

Accordingly, the Minister explained that the new strategy for success of the eGovernment initiative would put in place the mechanisms for faster achievement of its goals, setting deadlines and sticking to them, providing every eGovernment project with sufficient human and financial resources.

The council of ministers will review the new strategy in May, and would set it in motion afterwards.

One of the obvious mechanisms for success, mentioned by the minister, which was surprisingly lacking in the past years, is the importance of re-structuring and modifying the procedures which governmental institutions follow in their daily routine, in a such a way that makes it possible to then automate these procedures and take them online. To a certain extent, many governmental services, at this stage and with the current work processes, just can’t go ‘e’!

Again, the problem lies in jurisdiction: who’s responsible for what.

The Ministry of ICT cannot be expected to achieve results if it’s not given the authority to make changes in other institutions.

That’s why, each ministry and governmental institution must re-structure from within, and at its own pace, which will somewhat hold back eGovernment plans. But, it’s a process that must start at some point. And the sooner, the better.

At the very least, this approach lays the basis for evaluating progress and success of the eGovernment initiative next year. Even that seemed like a difficult task before.

It’s quite disappointing that so much momentum and support, from the highest levels and for several years, resulted in the less than the expected results, but we salute the minister for taking on this challenge and hope this new approach yields the required results.

In the information age, we must extend reliable and practical eGovernment services to the Jordanian public. Whatever it takes, whether re-skilling the employees, overhauling management systems or re-structuring certain organizations; it must be done. And fast.


zanasser@gmail.com