Home by 10.00, where I worked all day catching-up on correspondence.
During the week Newham's Mayor agreed the Council's participation in the "Public Sector Mobile Portal" project, in which Newham became the lead site through its work on the Telecommunications Convergence project. http://www.sntconsulting.org/index.html
I was contacted by a Local Government Chronicle reporter concerning a story in Public Sector Forums, about applications for ".gov.uk" domain applications being automatically refused. I wasn't aware of this policy of "presumed rejection" introduced, it seems, because Government wants to reduce the number of Government domains. This may be semantics, but isn't ".gov.uk" the domain, which encompasses government web-sites; and aren't the important criteria to do with value and being Government related, rather than number; and isn't the transformational government programme, and joining-up with private and third sectors, going to mean more new sites?
Friday, 30 May 2008
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Thursday 29th May
The main conference, today, attracted 370 municipal delegates, and around 100 private sector attendees. The exhibition was sold-out, with 36 exhibitors. The number of card reader suppliers, in the exhibition, plainly demonstrated the reality of ID card usage in Belgium. There were six parallel conference streams, the first of which was in English, in deference to the international delegates. Unfortunately, this was poorly attended by the home audience, although the quality of the presentations was excellent. I particularly enjoyed one that, with the title of "From Data Storage to Information Management", had seemed uninviting. The discourse was of how ICT has moved from an era of structured data management to unstructured data searched via "Folksonomies". This struck a chord with me, as it's consistent with my view that ICT and the web are now synonymous. I also learned another new word as in the expression "universal taxonomy is a good example of omphaloskepsis"; (navel-gazing!)
In our final evening, the international guests were treated to dinner by with the V-ICT-OR Board, and to Belgian beer-tasting – which I have come to appreciate very much indeed!
In the photo, below, Eddy Van der Stock, the President of V-ICT-OR is second from the left, next to Louis Massagé, the conference organiser. Mike Manson, the CEO of ALGIM (New Zealand) is next, then Socitm's Peter Ryder. Behind him, in the red shirt, is Ken Keen of GMIS (USA) standing next to Christian Bonfre (Kommits). Eddy's wife, Vivian, is just in front of Christian, next to Annette Knutson (Kommits), who is next to Richard Steel. Standing on the far right is Harry Turnbull, the President of MISA (Canada).
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
Wednesday 28th May
The main conference proceedings are being held at "De Montil" conference centre in Affligem. Today was dedicated to LOLA business, with just a couple of dozen delegates in work-shop style. Clearly, I am still learning about Socitm and its affiliations, and today I learned that LOLA is organised into two divisions – LOLA International, and LOLA Europe, chaired by Peter Ryder! I also think I learned that this Belgian conference is mainly a Flemish affair. Belgium is organised into two administrative regions, each with their own parliaments – Flanders, with 6m Dutch speakers in the north, and 3m French speaking Walloons in the south.
Speakers, today, included the Flemish e-Government Minister (and Minister for Foreign Affairs) and civil servants from federal and regional government. In the past 3-4 years Belgian e-Government has developed fast. There is national e-Identity Card, and citizen data is exchanged through its "Magda" data exchange platform. A Flemish privacy commission supervises the transfer of information between administrations. Use of this system is mandatory for central information but, for now, it is optional for Local Authorities. LAs have recently been asked to make proposals to central government on how they will use the e-IDs. Within the past few weeks, Flemish legislation has been passed that guarantees citizens the right only to give information to government once. There are published information owners for each government database, and departments that need to access information about citizens are expected to find it themselves in the appropriate "authentic" source.
Access management (through "ACM") is based on the national e-ID Card, and provides single sign-on and Identity and Privilege Management is based on a industry agreed federated identity management standards. Antwerp will be the first Local Authority to use the system.
The e-Government Minister played a film the Government commissioned to exemplify its vision of how citizens may interact with Government in 25 years' time! I understand this will be published, with the other conference proceedings, to the V-ICT-OR web-site, so I'll link to it from my Blog as soon as I know it's available.
An Academic from Amsterdam University presented the proposed approach to investigating ICT competencies. I'm relieved to say that this will include reviewing the Aspire arrangements. However, for me the outstanding sound-bite from his presentation was that Amsterdam's Executive Master in Information Management degree is targeted at people aged 35 to 55. I did my MBA at 40, so I guess that's about right by its criteria, but I do think the notion that professionals need a mid-career academic boost is reasonable.
Christian presented proposals to apply for EU funding for LOLA work, which he illustrated by reference to the I-COIN project that his Swedish municipality led. I thought this looked quite a lot like the ATTACH EU-funded project that Newham was involved in some years ago…
This was a very long, tiring day, so you may be glad to hear that we made-up for yesterday's day of leisure!
Speakers, today, included the Flemish e-Government Minister (and Minister for Foreign Affairs) and civil servants from federal and regional government. In the past 3-4 years Belgian e-Government has developed fast. There is national e-Identity Card, and citizen data is exchanged through its "Magda" data exchange platform. A Flemish privacy commission supervises the transfer of information between administrations. Use of this system is mandatory for central information but, for now, it is optional for Local Authorities. LAs have recently been asked to make proposals to central government on how they will use the e-IDs. Within the past few weeks, Flemish legislation has been passed that guarantees citizens the right only to give information to government once. There are published information owners for each government database, and departments that need to access information about citizens are expected to find it themselves in the appropriate "authentic" source.
Access management (through "ACM") is based on the national e-ID Card, and provides single sign-on and Identity and Privilege Management is based on a industry agreed federated identity management standards. Antwerp will be the first Local Authority to use the system.
The e-Government Minister played a film the Government commissioned to exemplify its vision of how citizens may interact with Government in 25 years' time! I understand this will be published, with the other conference proceedings, to the V-ICT-OR web-site, so I'll link to it from my Blog as soon as I know it's available.
An Academic from Amsterdam University presented the proposed approach to investigating ICT competencies. I'm relieved to say that this will include reviewing the Aspire arrangements. However, for me the outstanding sound-bite from his presentation was that Amsterdam's Executive Master in Information Management degree is targeted at people aged 35 to 55. I did my MBA at 40, so I guess that's about right by its criteria, but I do think the notion that professionals need a mid-career academic boost is reasonable.
Christian presented proposals to apply for EU funding for LOLA work, which he illustrated by reference to the I-COIN project that his Swedish municipality led. I thought this looked quite a lot like the ATTACH EU-funded project that Newham was involved in some years ago…
This was a very long, tiring day, so you may be glad to hear that we made-up for yesterday's day of leisure!
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Tuesday 27th May
Day two of the V-ICT-OR conference started in a LOLA meeting with representatives of Amsterdam University, who it's proposed will undertake a project on ICT professional competencies. As previously reported, Socitm is piloting use of the Aspire framework, so the starting point, for me, should be to consider whether this can be adopted internationally.
Having done a little bit of work, we were entertained, for the rest of the day, in a visit, by train and tram, to Ghent. Following lunch, there was a walking tour of the city, and short boat trip, with aperitifs served. In the evening we did a sort of "restaurant crawl" – with a dinner course taken at each restaurant. We returned, exhausted, to the hotel and to bed pretty early for a good night's sleep.
My learning highlight, for the day, was the derivation of the term "stinking rich" – from those who could afford to have themselves buried in church crypts, in the hope/ belief they'd improve their chances of going to heaven – but I expect you knew that!
Having done a little bit of work, we were entertained, for the rest of the day, in a visit, by train and tram, to Ghent. Following lunch, there was a walking tour of the city, and short boat trip, with aperitifs served. In the evening we did a sort of "restaurant crawl" – with a dinner course taken at each restaurant. We returned, exhausted, to the hotel and to bed pretty early for a good night's sleep.
My learning highlight, for the day, was the derivation of the term "stinking rich" – from those who could afford to have themselves buried in church crypts, in the hope/ belief they'd improve their chances of going to heaven – but I expect you knew that!
Monday, 26 May 2008
Monday 26th May
Chris drove me through the bank holiday monsoon to the Eurostar terminal at Ebbsfleet for my 8.00 train to Brussels for the V-ICT-OR "International Congress" incorporating the annual LOLA meeting. After recent unproductive car journeys to Socitm meetings, it was good to be able to get some work done during the brief trip – which was no longer than my daily commute into London!
I was met at the Brussels terminus by Louis Massage, who drove me to the conference hotel at Aalst. I say "conference hotel", but it turns-out only the international guests stay there; as Belgium is a small country, the local delegates commute daily to the venue. The "Miss Belgian Beauty 2009" pageant was taking place at the hotel, so there were welcome distractions for the international al visitors. However the weather wasn't good, so I was content to stay in my hotel room and catch-up on correspondence until Peter Ryder turned-up – about 3.00pm – and we adjourned to a local bar. Well – it was a holiday at home!
During the afternoon, we were joined by colleagues from Sweden – Annette and Christian, who were now "old friends", Mike Manson – who had been enjoying an extended holiday with his family in Europe since the Kommits conference, Canada, the US and, of course, Belgium.
Much of this event is dedicated to the launch of LOLA – the association of local government societies from the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand, Belgium, Holland and Sweden. The first meeting, from 5 until 7.30 pm, mainly concerned development of its web-site.
To be honest, I've always been sceptical about the benefits of international co-operation, study tours etc, so a big part of my agenda on this trip is to challenge the assumption that "LOLA" is worth pursuing. The initial LOLA web-site is fairly basic, so I'm keen to consider how we can make it more engaging through the use of RSS feeds and collaboration software. A New Zealand supplier has offered to finance a survey on unified communications in the LOLA countries. I am supportive only if it is undertaken to enable a gap analysis to identify what must be done to achieve an agreed vision of what we understand by "unified communications".
Of much greater interest, I thought, was another New Zealand proposal – to develop and pilot a "Personal Learning Assistant" – software that "learns" individuals' preferred work-styles, and assists them by predicting web searches and prompting with relevant facts, whilst maintaining a "knowledge bank".
After dinner and a few drinks at the hotel, we again adjourned to a local bar. Guess which 70s hit by the Kinks was requested (repeatedly!)?
I was met at the Brussels terminus by Louis Massage, who drove me to the conference hotel at Aalst. I say "conference hotel", but it turns-out only the international guests stay there; as Belgium is a small country, the local delegates commute daily to the venue. The "Miss Belgian Beauty 2009" pageant was taking place at the hotel, so there were welcome distractions for the international al visitors. However the weather wasn't good, so I was content to stay in my hotel room and catch-up on correspondence until Peter Ryder turned-up – about 3.00pm – and we adjourned to a local bar. Well – it was a holiday at home!
During the afternoon, we were joined by colleagues from Sweden – Annette and Christian, who were now "old friends", Mike Manson – who had been enjoying an extended holiday with his family in Europe since the Kommits conference, Canada, the US and, of course, Belgium.
Much of this event is dedicated to the launch of LOLA – the association of local government societies from the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand, Belgium, Holland and Sweden. The first meeting, from 5 until 7.30 pm, mainly concerned development of its web-site.
To be honest, I've always been sceptical about the benefits of international co-operation, study tours etc, so a big part of my agenda on this trip is to challenge the assumption that "LOLA" is worth pursuing. The initial LOLA web-site is fairly basic, so I'm keen to consider how we can make it more engaging through the use of RSS feeds and collaboration software. A New Zealand supplier has offered to finance a survey on unified communications in the LOLA countries. I am supportive only if it is undertaken to enable a gap analysis to identify what must be done to achieve an agreed vision of what we understand by "unified communications".
Of much greater interest, I thought, was another New Zealand proposal – to develop and pilot a "Personal Learning Assistant" – software that "learns" individuals' preferred work-styles, and assists them by predicting web searches and prompting with relevant facts, whilst maintaining a "knowledge bank".
After dinner and a few drinks at the hotel, we again adjourned to a local bar. Guess which 70s hit by the Kinks was requested (repeatedly!)?
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