Contents 16/2001:

• Editorial: Committee recommendation terminates the Newsletter
• New information figured out
• APEC promises universal Internet access in ten years
• A forum for promoting the development of location-related mobile services
• World e-Inclusion: Philanthropy or business?

Editorial: Committee recommendation terminates the Newsletter

This is the final issue of the Government Computerization Newsletter. The termination decision was made by the secretariat after the ESCAP Committee on Statistics requested that any IT related activity under the statistics subprogramme be directly relevant to statistical offices.  That effectively erased the Newsletter and other generic public sector computerization activities from the statistics work programme.  The recommendation was endorsed by the fifty-seventh session of the Commission, held from 19 to 29 April 2001.

The marginal resources that were released by the termination of the public sector computerization component were shifted at the beginning of 2001 to support statistical IT activities related to statistical work.

Public sector computerization and statistics were first linked in a "marriage of convenience" some 14 years ago.  Public sector computerization issues were inserted into the terms of reference of the Committee on Statistics because, at that time, there were no better-qualified parliamentary bodies to deliberate on those topics. 

The Committee's recommendation to cease generic public sector computerization activities under the statistics programme did not come as a surprise as it had expressed similar views in its earlier sessions.  Spreading the thin resources of the statistics subprogramme over such a vast area as government computerization necessarily limited the impact of the activities undertaken.  Nevertheless in some key areas, such as Y2K awareness creation, the secretariat was able to play an appreciable role.

Readers who are interested in historical background information or details of public sector computerization activities can refer to the Committee document E/ESCAP/STAT.12/18 at  http://www.unescap.org/stat/cos12/12_18.pdf, or to past issues of the Government Computerization Newsletter.

 A different matter altogether for ESCAP is how it should promote the development of public sector information systems in general.  The expectations are high, as evident from the attention that IT for development received during the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000, and during the High-level Segment of ECOSOC in July, which was reported on in the previous issue.

With the reduced content in this final issue, we offer our warm thanks to all readers for supporting the Government Computerization Newsletter.

New information figured out

Researchers at the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California at Berkeley estimated that the world's total yearly production of unique information is equivalent to roughly 1.5 billion gigabytes (10¹⁸ bytes) of storage space.  That makes 250 megabytes per person.  The study covered paper, film, optical and magnetic media types.  It is important to note that in many cases the upper and lower bounds of the estimates of storage space are far apart (see table below).

A nearly two thirds of new information produced is stored in magnetic form in the disk drives of personal computers, and on departmental and enterprise servers.

The aggregate figure includes over 80 billion photographs taken every year, X-ray pictures, music CDs, DVDs  and camcorder tapes, which together make roughly a third of the hypothetical storage requirement.

The quantity of unique printed information is marginal, making up only 0.003 per cent of the total (when converted to storage space).  This minuscule share is explained by a high rate of compression achieved for text (as compared to image compression).

Source: http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/how-much-info

Although the Berkeley study was primarily concerned with content that is stored, it also gives some indication about the volume of communication that is usually not systematically stored. On the Internet, email generates by far the largest amount of unique information, more than 11,000 terabytes, while Usenet messages generate 73 terabytes and the World Wide Web consists of  "only" 21 terabytes of static HTML pages. If systematically archived, telephone conversations in the United States alone would require 576,000 terabytes of storage space, which is 40 times the space that unique TV programmes would need.

APEC promises universal Internet access in ten years

In the summit in Brunei, the economic leaders of APEC committed themselves to developing and implementing a policy framework that will enable the people of urban, provincial and rural communities in every economy to have individual or community-based access to information and services offered via the Internet by 2010.

The first milestone is to triple the number of people within the region with individual and community-based access by 2005.

The leaders recognised that governments cannot achieve the vision alone. It would require outward-looking and market-oriented policies which can attract business investment and the cooperation and skills of our universities, training and research institutions, colleges and schools. They also recognised that the pace of development and implementation of the appropriate policy framework would vary in each economy because of the diversity among members and the widely different levels at which information and communication technology is now integrated.

The full declaration of APEC leaders can be found at  http://www.apecsec.org.sg/virtualib/econlead/brunei.html

A forum for promoting the development of location-related mobile services

Major wireless manufacturers have joined forces to develop global interoperable location-based services and applications. The idea is to provide services to users based on their geographic location -- which changes as they travel. The innovation is not in being able to determine the users' position accurately --which the Global Positioning System, for instance, can do accurately -- but in providing services and information relative to their geographic location.

Typical applications would be related to making information and commercial services available in the user's mobile device when he is approaching the area.  The first services are expected to become available in 2001.

As such, technologies needed for providing location-based mobile services are existing, but applications have not been able to develop because of the lack of interoperability. The challenges to overcome include

• the non-alignment of the technology standards involved, which are governed by bodies with different agendas
• the multiplicity and complexity of positioning methods
• the lack of contents interoperability
• security and end user privacy concerns
• the focusing on specific (wireless) technologies and short term market requirements

Link to the Location Interoperability Forum: http://www.locationforum.org/

World e-Inclusion: Philanthropy or business?

Think about this programme:  In the first year alone the programme promises to deliver "on-the-ground" solutions to poor people in at least 1000 villages. That will be achieved through establishing alliances with major global partners and strategic partnerships with regional or function-specific organizations, local projects and service-delivery teams.

The applications will be in five areas:

• Health: diagnostic and consultative services; telemedicine
• Education:  basic literacy and vocational training
• Information based e-jobs
• Access to markets, crops, crafts, information products
• e-money to expand access to microcredit and other financial services

Sounds like a great initiative, but what makes it very special is that it is coming from a major global computer equipment manufacturer.  What you just read is the basic framework of Hewlett Packard's "World e-Inclusion" strategy (see http://www.hp.com/e-inclusion/). With it, the company extends its business focus to traditionally underserved markets in Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.

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