Governance2.Org

Google Australia on Friday unveiled what it described as the world’s most powerful dedicated election website, capable of exposing inconsistencies in the public pronouncements of political leaders.
With an election due in Australia before the end of the year, Google claims its website would be a powerful tool for voters and would help generate debate during the upcoming campaign.
Prime Minister John Howard, who has announced policies online for the first time in the lead-up to the election, said politicians were now taking the Internet seriously. However, its user-generated content means it is also a potential minefield for politicians.
Google’s Australian-developed election site includes a feature called “On the Record”, where users can type in a politician’s name, along with an issue of their choosing.
It then scours parliamentary transcripts and the politician’s personal website to find any statements on the issue, allowing voters to check whether their representatives are being consistent.
It also gives voters electoral information through a range of online tools including YouTube, GoogleEarth and GoogleMaps. Google said it was the first time so many features had been available on a single election website. [Via]

Given the earlier Bourne promotion on Google, this seems to be a route that Google is increasing taking – given the resources they are able to pull together, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

Hindu: In the largest such simultaneous deployment of ‘free-and-open’ software in India, over 15 lakh Kerala schoolchildren on Friday start taking their quarterly practical tests in Information Technology on personal computers using a special Linux version.
The IT@School project of the State Education Department has developed an operating system based on the Linux version Ubuntu. Called IT@School GNU Linux Version 3.0, it was distributed to 2,832 high schools — over a thousand of them government schools, the rest aided and unaided ones.
Between September 7 and 22, children of Classes 8, 9 and 10 will use some 30,000 PCs to do their quarterly practical examinations in IT.
The State’s path-breaking e-learning initiative Akshaya had raised popular expectations, but the cost of proprietary software licences in bulk was unaffordable. This led to the State emerging as a pioneer in the use of Open Source resources in a host of education and e-governance projects

Pop stars are doing it, so are millions of teenagers and even Communist Party politicians — blogging has taken Vietnam by storm and spawned an alternative communications universe to dusty state media.
In an online phenomenon that has exploded in a little over a year in this youthful and booming nation, millions of net surfers now reveal all as they share daily gossip and thoughts on their fast-changing society.
When Vietnam hosted world leaders for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit last year, student volunteers and state-paid staff provided behind-the-scenes looks at the event.
Bloggers have fought wars over the cultural divide between Vietnam’s north and south, but they have also raised funds for the needy, arranged organ donations and given support to people suffering deadly diseases.
Vietnam may be a one-party state that censors its official media and the Internet, but this hasn’t stopped millions of yong people embracing a world of carefree online chatting their parents could only have dreamed off.
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Formed as a result of the Crime & Disorder Act 1998, the idea behind the Partnership is that no single agency can tackle crime, disorder, or drugs by itself, and that it takes the joined-up efforts of a number of different agencies to make a real difference to community safety issues in Leicester.
The Safer Leicester Partnership (SLP) is made up of a number of different agencies, including Leicester City Council, Leicestershire Constabulary, Leicestershire Fire & Rescue Service, Leicestershire & Rutland Probation Board and local NHS Primary Trusts. It was formed as a result of the Crime & Disorder Act 1998.
The Partnership also includes partners from the private sector, such as the local Chamber of Commerce and the voluntary sector, including victim and witness support services, and is committed to providing a fair and equitable service to everyone in the community regardless of their ethnicity, sexuality, gender, disability, religion or age.

Note: Currently the website contains tips on staying safe, but going forward could perhaps increases its services to providing street views via cameras, emergency contact via mobile phone, etc. I would think that Citizen involvement would be instrumental for a safe neighbourhood. The website does not render very well in Firefox.

The cost-free CDM Bazaar was unveiled by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, to encourage an exchange of information among buyers, sellers and service providers involved in the scheme.
Here, projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries and contribute to sustainable development can earn certified emission reduction (CER) credits.
CDM Bazaar allows participants to post information, such as potential emission reduction projects looking for financing, CERs available for sale, buyers looking for carbon credits to purchase, services available, carbon market related events, and employment opportunities.
The Kyoto Protocol requires 36 industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions overall by at least five per cent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.
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With a view to provide specialized health services to patients in rural areas, a two way telemedicine link between Sir Ganga Ram Hospital here and Community Health Centres at Haryana and Rajasthan was established today.
Launching the pilot project ‘Village Resource Centre´ (VRC), a link between the hospital and CHCs in Gohana, Haryana and Kaithun, Rajasthan, Union Minister for Science and Technology Kapil Sibal said the Ministry is planning to start 15 other VRCs in different parts of northern India soon.
“The project aims at providing quality healthcare, early diagnosis, treatment and tertiary consultation from SGRH to medical kiosks established in village hospitals,” Sibal said.
The VRCs will also provide services like rural medical insurance, farming advise, weather updates, water management, employment generation through vocational courses and educational facilities.
[Via]

In an effort to lure young voters to the polls, Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz recently announced Thursday that her agency’s Web site will offer a video showing how to use the state’s recently acquired optical scan voting machines. The 90-second video can be downloaded onto personal recording devices, including iPods, and will also be available on YouTube.
Bysiewicz acknowledged that most young people who know how to use an iPod would likely understand how to use an optical scan machine. But it still makes sense to provide instructions on the Internet, where young people get much of their information, she said.
She pointed to national efforts to remind young people to vote through text messages on their cell phones apart placing ads in newspapers, on cable TV and radio.
“We’re trying to get the information out to all the age groups using the media that they’re most likely to use on a regular basis,” she said.
For years, Connecticut used lever voting machines. The new system requires users to fill out ballots by hand and feed them into scanning machines.
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The Madurai Division of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) will phase out the use of paper slowly with the introduction of Enterprising Data Management System (EDMS), which would pave way for keeping records in electronic form, and facilitate LIC transactions by a policy holder from anywhere in the country. The Madurai division will serve as a pilot scheme in the south zone, and the second division in the country.
Between 1-14 August, LIC sold 73,432 policies, mopping Rs82 crore as premium.
[Via]

The fishermen of Veerampattinam will soon have a mobile phone enabled intelligence system that will tell them everything from where to fish to when to venture home because the weather could turn ugly. M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) is working on on a solution to provide real time information on mobile phones using CDMA. The features:
1. Weather updates to help the fishermen decide whether or not to venture out
2. Information on fish concentration to increase catch
3. A GPS capability is also being worked out, which would make rescue operations easier.
The pilot project involving 10 fishermen is running on the Tata Teleservices Ltd , whose coverage extends to a range of 15-20 km off the coast, covers about 80% of the fishermen’s requirement. “It is currently in Phase 0—we hope to move through four phases over a period of one and a half years. By November this year, we would like to perfect the application, and make about 100 phones available across the coast,” says Parag Kar, senior director of Qualcomm in India and SAARC.
The cost of the handset is estimated at less than Rs 2,500, and would be subsidized by Qualcomm and MSSRF.
[Via]

The standard of education was falling in the Maldives before broadband Internet access brought a quiet online revolution to classrooms in the Indian Ocean atoll nation.
Now Asina Ahmed hooks up to the Internet and uses a smart board with a touch-sensitive screen to liven up a maths class for a group of young Maldivian children on remote Rashdoo Island.
Ahmed invites eight-year-old Aishath Zayba Ismail to count the number of cherries in a fruit basket. Ismail approaches the board, places her hand over the images and glides each cherry across the white board.
With a special pen she scribbles “four cherries” on the screen.
Before the smart board arrived, there was no interactive learning in Rashdoo Island, 37 miles (60 kilometres) west of the capital island Male.
Broadband connectivity across the atolls has enabled interactive learning methods like the smart board to take off, putting the fun back into classrooms and encouraging children’s communications skills.
Literacy rates in this Indian Ocean archipelago exceed 90 percent, with nearly all children receiving some form of primary education, but the quality of teaching remains low, partly due to the low skills of the teachers themselves.
[Via]