(4/3/2008) Twenty-three million Taiwan citizens will be issued biometric e-passports by the second half of 2008, under the new National Identity System (NIS) developed by Hewlett-Packard. The project aims to improve the detection of forged or altered passports and to ensure more convenient travel across borders. | (4/2/2008) IBM announced earlier this week that they have received a grand jury summons from the U.S. Attorney's Office over possible procurement violations between employees of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and certain IBM employees. | (4/1/2008) Up to five million British citizens have been incorrectly taxed by the IT system at HM Revenue and Customs, the National Audit Office has warned. HMRC's pay as you earn IT systems were "not well suited to the efficient administration of income tax where people have more than one job or change jobs on a regular basis," the NAO said. | (3/28/2008) Washington Gov. Chris Gregoir this week signed a bill making it a Class C felony to use RFID technology to spy on someone. The bill was signed about a week after the Washington State Senate unanimously passed Bill 1031, which makes it a crime to intentionally scan people's identification remotely without their knowledge and consent, for the purpose of fraud, identity theft, or some other illegal purpose. | (3/26/2008) Private contract employees working at the U.S. Department of State have repeatedly accessed U.S. Senator Barack Obama's passport records over the past three months -- a breach flagged by the State Department's in-house computer system but subsequently downplayed by the supervisors of the offices in which the breaches occurred. | (3/26/2008) IBM announced last week that it would integrate a virtual worlds platform into Lotus Sametime, Big Blue's collaboration software, that will be used by the U.S. Intelligence agencies to communicate on key topics such as terrorism. | (3/24/2008) Britain is under increased threat from state-sponsored cyber attacks, the government says, and it plans to spend on IT to tackle them. Announcing the publication of the first National Security Strategy for the U.K. last week, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the government will "modernize its interception capability." | (3/20/2008) According to a report that measures the online performance of a variety of sites, user satisfaction with federal government Web sites is at its lowest point in three years. | (3/18/2008) Many companies spend a small fortune and deploy a small army to secure themselves from the many security threats lurking these days. But all those efforts can come to naught when making any of these common mistakes. | (3/13/2008) The first UK Internet Governance Forum (IGF) took place at the Houses of Parliament last week with representatives from the Specialist Crime Directorate, MPs and a British ambassador. IGF will share information between law enforcement, Internet service providers and charities for victims of abuse online, in order to discuss strategies to tackle online crime. |
  | |  | | Blog Spotlight: Sandford Borins |  | As Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto, Sandford Borins brings InterGovWorld.com readers exclusive insights into how and why the public sector is changing. You'll find new perspectives and questions, observations and objectives, lessons and answers. Cover to Cover, the blog by Prof. Sandford Borins, appears every Thursday. Inside Cover to Cover | |
| | | Unified Communications |  | Unity is a word often heard in the public sector, with myriad agencies and departments looking to foster collective thinking around some of today's most pressing issues. The word, however, doesn't usually get mentioned in the same breath as technology. That's a situation, though, that might soon be changing, thanks to a new software platform known as unified communications.
| |
|  | |  | |
|
|  |
| | |
| | |
 |  | Knowledge Centres at a Glance |  | | | | |  | |  |  | | | | | |
|
|
|
