Consumers who still pay bills via snail mail. Hospitals leery of making treatment records available online to their patients. Some state motor vehicle registries that require car owners to appear in person — or to mail back license plates — in order to transfer vehicle ownership.

But the White House is out to fight cyberphobia with an initiative intended to bolster confidence in e-commerce.

Full report.

Anyway, here are the slides and the video that was not shown.

I made a case for governments freeing up basic data on a non-discriminatory basis. That there should be data and freedom for m applications developers to use the data and develop innovative products and services. I also pointed out that ICT solutions had to be accompanied by complementary solutions. In case of the example I used, agricultural market information, these were cold storage (could be provided by the government or by the private sector) and forward/futures markets (possibly required the government to lead and shape the environment).

I was surprised by a comment made by the moderator, an employee of ICTA. He said that my statement about SLT exerting undue control over the cable station during the panel discussion was evidence that freedom of speech existed in Sri Lanka! Wow and wow again.

I have criticized the remnants of market power in the Sri Lanka telecom sector in multiple places on the record. I have even publicly criticized his own ICT agency. I do not need to exercise my freedom of speech to say what theory and evidence plainly says is wrong: continuing to allow an incumbent operator to control an essential facility and engage in discriminatory behavior against its competitors. I can only feel sorry for people make such silly statements at public events.

This forum will cover the strategies on how to align technology investments with agency priorities – to create necessary infrastructure and establish the enabling environment for the implementation of e-government services, thus, creating an effective and efficient e-Governance.

Rohan will speak at the session “Digital inclusion”. The talk will discuss the projects that effectively and sustainably bridged the digital divide. He will also take part as a panelist in “Mobile as a main Channel of Government Service Delivery”.

Click here,  for the brochure on the event.

For more info visit: http://www.futuregov.asia/events/futuregov-forum-sri-lanka-2011/

“You often hear people talk about broadband from a business development perspective, but it’s much more significant than that,” Mr. Depew added. “This is about whether rural communities are going to participate in our democratic society. If you don’t have effective broadband, you are cut out of things that are really core to who we are as a country.”

Affordable broadband service through hard wiring and or cellular phone coverage could revolutionize life in rural parts of the country. People could pay bills, shop and visit doctors online. They could work from home and take college classes.

Increasingly, interacting with certain branches of government can be done only online. And sometimes, a lack of cellphone or e-mail access can have serious consequences. Emergency alerts regarding severe weather, for example, are often sent only through text or e-mail.

All of that is important, certainly. But here in Clarke County, where churches and taxidermy shops line the main roads and drivers learn early to dodge logging trucks hauling pine trees, most people would simply like to upload photos of their children to Facebook.

“Ninety-five percent of the people in this county who want public water can have it, but people can’t even talk to each other around here,” said Sharon Jones, 60, who owns a small logging company with her husband and lives just outside Coffeeville.

It took her three days to try to arrange a meeting with the governor 150 miles away in Montgomery because such inquiries cannot be made over the phone and she had to drive 45 minutes to her daughter’s house to use e-mail.

CIOL : .NET & Windows : Make bandwidth available to all, says Kalam

NDTV’s Prannoy Roy moderated a discussion in which Ballmer, N R Narayana Murthy, Ashok Jhunjhunwala and Manvinder Singh of Ranbaxy participated. He started off by asking Ballmer about the contrasting personalities of the top two at Microsoft: small, shy and geeky versus flambuoyant and six feet six. Opposites make for the best partnerships was the reply.To a question on whether Google was making Microsoft change tracks and if we were going to get free software from Microsoft soon, Ballmer said the future held a mix of business models that would coexist and thrive, spurred by innovation.

Ravi Venkatesan kicked off the event, speaking of the contrasts in India: the millionaires and the malnourished children; the successful e-gov projects and the “graveyard of pilot projects.”

1. I am even more convinced that the backbone is a critical hole in the original reform thinking. Its significance is highlighted by Korea’s success in broadband and everything ICT. .

2. The issue of converting to a new spectrum regime that gets away from exclusive licenses for specific frequencies is likely to be a hot issue in the coming years. Many developing countries will need help to clear frequencies for higher-value uses even under the old regime. But allowing for technologies that require jumping around in a range of frequencies like WiFi (moderate) and WiMax (radical) will require more sophisticated approaches. Or approaches that have not been developed upto now. The old trick of making the beneficiary pay for relocating the current user is difficult when there is no discrete identifiable beneficiary, as in WiFi.

3. The key lesson that can be drawn from the e Sri Lanka design is the importance of an integrated approach: infrastructure enables e-gov; e-gov creates the conditions for e commerce; e commerce creates demand for bandwidth, which justifies the whole infrastructure investment. In addition, we linked it to a services-trade based overall growth strategy.

4. Benchmark and regional regulation as remedies for problems of regulatory implementation. Old hat, but very important.

Professor William H. Melody
Technical University of Denmark
London School of Economics

… in his presentation on “public administration in an e-economy” to the Sri Lanka Institute of Development Administration.

Melody further explained that e-government, as the application of new technology to deliver public services – is efficient, effective, and responsive. Timely application of new technology will make the government better, cheaper and faster.

Mr. Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to Hon. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, co-chair, reported that the Sri Lankan government is taking steps to reengineer itself as a viable e-government.

This bi-monthly executive seminar series is being conducted to raise e-gov awareness among public servants. Participants in this inaugural session included senior secretaries and officials from relevant ministries and organizations like the Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA). This program is backed by T.M.K.B. Tennakoon – Director of SLIDA, Prof. Rohan Samarajiva – Executive Director of LIRNEasia and CISCO Internet Business Solutions Group.