| 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.
|
"90. The Committee supported the recommendation
of the Bureau [of the Committee on Statistics]
to retain public sector computerization
in the Committee's terms of reference,
but at the same time, to limit the scope
of information technology activities
of the statistics subprogramme so that
they were directly relevant to the work
of statistical offices. The Committee
felt that such an interpretation was
fully consistent with the preambular
phrase in its terms of reference, whereby
the Committee acted as the focus of
regional statistical development. The
Committee thus decided to leave its
terms of reference unchanged."
|
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).
|
Medium/type of content
|
Upper estimate
|
Lower estimate
|
|
(Terabytes or 1012
bytes)
|
|
Paper
|
240
|
23
|
|
-
Books
|
8
|
1
|
|
-
Newspapers
|
25
|
2
|
|
-
Periodicals
|
12
|
1
|
|
-
Office documents
|
195
|
19
|
|
Film
|
427216
|
58216
|
|
-
Photographs
|
410000
|
41000
|
|
-
Cinema
|
16
|
16
|
|
-
X-Rays
|
17200
|
17200
|
|
Optical
|
83
|
31
|
|
-
Music CDs
|
58
|
6
|
|
-
Data CDs
|
3
|
3
|
|
-
DVDs
|
22
|
22
|
|
Magnetic
|
1693000
|
577210
|
|
-
Camcorder Tape
|
300000
|
300000
|
|
-
PC Disk Drives
|
766000
|
7660
|
|
-
Departmental Servers
|
460000
|
161000
|
|
-
Enterprise Servers
|
167000
|
108550
|
|
Total new information
|
2120539
|
635480
|
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.
*** END OF GOVERNMENT COMPUTERIZATION
NEWSLETTER ***
|
About Us | Media Centre | Members | Programmes | Documents | Publications | Jobs | 
Bangkok, Thailand