From the newfound hatred of Norwegian football referees to the desperate search for signs of economic recovery in the UK, the hot topics of the day need to be served with a side dish of fundamentals 101.
Fundamentals of Champions League refereeing
Now, the Norwegian referee case does not really have any obvious fundamentals attached to it more than that one should know that Norwegians like vacationing in Spain more than in the UK, and who wants to see more Chelsea-Man U games this year anyways?
Next Thursday (14 May), a few hundred government representatives will be gathering with senior members of the industry at the Intellect-Cabinet Office event, Tower ’09. I’ll be blogging live from the ‘Tower’ to give you an update on the government’s vision for wider public sector reform, and the visions, experiences and innovations shared by key government figures.
Our cadre of top-notch speakers, including Tom Watson MP (parliamentary secretary) and Lord Davies (the trade minister), will be looking at themes such as open government, empowering people and businesses, and driving service transformation to increase productivity and innovation.
I hope to see you then and/or in the blogosphere.
Times are hard in Digital Communications. Consumer confidence is at an all time low, retail sales are down and jobs are being cut. There are some bright spots but the recent launch by Lord Carter of his interim Digital Britain report was a real ray of sunshine in amongst this economic gloom. He promised that the final recommendations will “advance our standing as a world leader in [the digital communications] industries” and “see Digital Britain as the leading major economy for innovation, investment and quality.” This is sounds great, really great, but at all costs we must avoid the worst case scenario: that we become a technological island.
I’ve just written an article on this in May’s edition of IQ
I have just written an article for iQ about connecting the poorest 1 billion people to the internet. The real objective has to be an ‘internet for the entire world’ – all 6.7 billion of us. And that means in all languages, scripts, geographies, abilities and environments in which humans live and work.
Do you think this is possible?
Read the full article in May’s edition of iQ.
There seemed to be less suspicion amongst commuters on the London Underground this morning as the papers reported a slow-down in the spread of the Mexican swine-flu outbreak.
Having been party to discussions on pandemic flu in my role as Defence and Security Programme Exec, I knew that a full blown outbreak could be devastating. With only a third of workers off sick, business would grind to a halt, money would run out at cash points, supplies would run out at shops in under two days and hospitals would be overwhelmed. For the moment we have got off lightly, but pandemic flu remains at the top of the Governments security concerns, above natural disaster and terrorist attack.
So in one sense swine-flu can be seen as a blessing – it is a timely reminder of what could be, and a prompt for Government agencies, organisations, businesses and citizens to work together to prepare in earnest for a pandemic.
Some good work is being undertaken by business continuity experts and voluntary organisations to prepare for such eventualities, but as always, more must be done.
What is often forgotten, and should be addressed in the post swine-flu fallout is the use of technology to improve emergency response. As we have seen this week, timely information is key to directing emergency responses, and in the case of flu-outbreaks requires multi-agency, international communications. These communications are currently hampered by a lack of information standards, and any detailed testing or analysis of the adequacy of national and international information flows in emergency situations. Work must be undertaken with the technology community to ensure that in the case of a sustained pandemic outbreak, the right people have the right information to act in time to save lives.