One of the SMS based services that I have been using for the last couple of months is offered by a local taxi company here and allows you to call a taxi with a one line piece of text to any building in the city state.

Lee Lup Yuen mentions it in a blog posting on ZDNet this morning;

In Singapore, you can now book a cab by simply sending an SMS message. I have used the ComfortDelGro SMS Taxi Booking Service for over a month and it has become my favorite mobile service.  To book a taxi, just send an SMS like: “Book 098585 taxi stand outside giant to 71222.”

Kudos to ComfortDelGro for a great service!

Kim documented what he called his Laws of Identity. These seven laws have since been used to help everybody from policy makers to technologists think about how to build identity management and metasystems ever since.

Rather than just mail this around internally, I thought it might be something that readers here would find interesting as well. I have pulled out the seven laws below, but I would highly encourage you to jump over to Kim’s blog and read the original post which gives these points a lot more context.

The text below is Kim’s work, not mine…

1. User Control and Consent

Technical identity systems must only reveal information identifying a user with the user’s consent. (Blogosphere discussion starts here…)

No one is as pivotal to the success of the identity metasystem as the individual who uses it. The system must first of all appeal by means of convenience and simplicity. But to endure, it must earn the user’s trust above all.

Earning this trust requires a holistic commitment. The system must be designed to put the user in control of what digital identities are used, and what information is released.

The system must also protect the user against deception, verifying the identity of any parties who ask for information. Should the user decide to supply identity information, there must be no doubt that it goes to the right place. And the system needs mechanisms to make the user aware of the purposes for which any information is being collected.

The system must inform the user when he or she has selected an identity provider able to track Internet behavior.

Further, it must reinforce the sense that the user is in control regardless of context, rather than arbitrarily altering its contract with the user. This means being able to support user consent in enterprise as well as consumer environments. It is essential to retain the paradigm of consent even when refusal might break a company’s conditions of employment. This serves both to inform the employee and indemnify the employer.

The Law of User Control and Consent allows for the use of mechanisms whereby the metasystem remembers user decisions, and users may opt to have them applied automatically on subsequent occasions.

2. Minimal Disclosure for a Constrained Use

The solution that discloses the least amount of identifying information and best limits its use is the most stable long-term solution. (Starts here…)

We should build systems that employ identifying information on the basis that a breach is always possible. Such a breach represents a risk. To mitigate risk, it is best to acquire information only on a “need to know” basis, and to retain it only on a “need to retain” basis. By following these practices, we can ensure the least possible damage in the event of a breach.

At the same time, the value of identifying information decreases as the amount decreases. A system built with the principles of information minimalism is therefore a less attractive target for identity theft, reducing risk even further.

By limiting use to an explicit scenario (in conjunction with the use policy described in the Law of Control), the effectiveness of the “need to know” principle in reducing risk is further magnified. There is no longer the possibility of collecting and keeping information “just in case” it might one day be required.

The concept of “least identifying information” should be taken as meaning not only the fewest number of claims, but the information least likely to identify a given individual across multiple contexts. For example, if a scenario requires proof of being a certain age, then it is better to acquire and store the age category rather than the birth date. Date of birth is more likely, in association with other claims, to uniquely identify a subject, and so represents “more identifying information” which should be avoided if it is not needed.

In the same way, unique identifiers that can be reused in other contexts (for example, drivers’ license numbers, Social Security Numbers, and the like) represent “more identifying information” than unique special-purpose identifiers that do not cross context. In this sense, acquiring and storing a Social Security Number represents a much greater risk than assigning a randomly generated student or employee number.

Numerous identity catastrophes have occurred where this law has been broken.

We can also express the Law of Minimal Disclosure this way: aggregation of identifying information also aggregates risk. To minimize risk, minimize aggregation.

3. Justifiable Parties

Digital identity systems must be designed so the disclosure of identifying information is limited to parties having a necessary and justifiable place in a given identity relationship. (Starts here…)

The identity system must make its user aware of the party or parties with whom she is interacting while sharing information.

The justification requirements apply both to the subject who is disclosing information and the relying party who depends on it. Our experience with Microsoft Passport is instructive in this regard. Internet users saw Passport as a convenient way to gain access to MSN sites, and those sites were happily using Passport�to the tune of over a billion interactions per day. However, it did not make sense to most non-MSN sites for Microsoft to be involved in their customer relationships. Nor were users clamoring for a single Microsoft identity service to be aware of all their Internet activities. As a result, Passport failed in its mission of being an identity system for the Internet.

We will see many more examples of this law going forward. Today some governments are thinking of operating digital identity services. It makes sense (and is clearly justifiable) for people to use government-issued identities when doing business with the government. But it will be a cultural matter as to whether, for example, citizens agree it is “necessary and justifiable” for government identities to be used in controlling access to a family wiki�or connecting a consumer to her hobby or vice.

The same issues will confront intermediaries building a trust fabric. The law is not intended to suggest limitations of what is possible, but rather to outline the dynamics of which we must be aware.

We know from the Law of Control and Consent that the system must be predictable and “translucent” in order to earn trust. But the user needs to understand whom she is dealing with for other reasons, as we will see in the Law of Human Integration. In the physical world we are able to judge a situation and decide what we want to disclose about ourselves. This has its analogy in digital justifiable parties.

Every party to disclosure must provide the disclosing party with a policy statement about information use. This policy should govern what happens to disclosed information. One can view this policy as defining “delegated rights” issued by the disclosing party.

Any use policy would allow all parties to cooperate with authorities in the case of criminal investigations. But this does not mean the state is party to the identity relationship. Of course, this should be made explicit in the policy under which information is shared.

4. Directed Identity

A universal identity system must support both “omni-directional” identifiers for use by public entities and “unidirectional” identifiers for use by private entities, thus facilitating discovery while preventing unnecessary release of correlation handles. (Starts here…)

Technical identity is always asserted with respect to some other identity or set of identities. To make an analogy with the physical world, we can say identity has direction, not just magnitude. One special “set of identities” is that of all other identities (the public). Other important sets exist (for example, the identities in an enterprise, an arbitrary domain, or a peer group).

Entities that are public can have identifiers that are invariant and well known. These public identifiers can be thought of as beacons�emitting identity to anyone who shows up. And beacons are “omni-directional” (they are willing to reveal their existence to the set of all other identities).

A corporate Web site with a well-known URL and public key certificate is a good example of such a public entity. There is no advantage�in fact there is a great disadvantage�in changing a public URL. It is fine for every visitor to the site to examine the public key certificate. It is equally acceptable for everyone to know the site is there: its existence is public.

A second example of such a public entity is a publicly visible device like a video projector. The device sits in a conference room in an enterprise. Visitors to the conference room can see the projector and it offers digital services by advertising itself to those who come near it. In the thinking outlined here, it has an omni-directional identity.

On the other hand, a consumer visiting a corporate Web site is able to use the identity beacon of that site to decide whether she wants to establish a relationship with it. Her system can then set up a “unidirectional” identity relation with the site by selecting an identifier for use with that site and no other. A unidirectional identity relation with a different site would involve fabricating a completely unrelated identifier. Because of this, there is no correlation handle emitted that can be shared between sites to assemble profile activities and preferences into super-dossiers.

When a computer user enters a conference room equipped with the projector described above, its omni-directional identity beacon could be utilized to decide (as per the Law of Control) whether she wants to interact with it. If she does, a short-lived unidirectional identity relation could be established between the computer and the projector�providing a secure connection while divulging the least possible identifying information in accordance with the law of minimal disclosure.

Bluetooth and other wireless technologies have not so far conformed to the Law of Directed Identity. They use public beacons for private entities. This explains the consumer backlash innovators in these areas are currently wrestling with.

Public key certificates have the same problem when used to identify individuals in contexts where privacy is an issue. It may be more than coincidental that certificates have so far been widely used when in conformance with this law (i.e., in identifying public Web sites) and generally ignored when it comes to identifying private individuals.

Another example involves the proposed usage of RFID technology in passports and student tracking applications. RFID devices currently emit an omni-directional public beacon. This is not appropriate for use by private individuals.

Passport readers are public devices and therefore should employ an omni-directional beacon. But passports should only respond to trusted readers. They should not be emitting signals to any eavesdropper that identify their bearers and peg them as nationals of a given country. Examples have been given of unmanned devices that could be detonated by these beacons. In California we are already seeing the first legislative measures being taken to correct abuse of identity directionality. It shows a failure of vision among technologists that legislators understand these issues before we do.

5. Pluralism of Operators and Technologies

A universal identity system must channel and enable the inter-working of multiple identity technologies run by multiple identity providers. (Starts here…)

It would be nice if there were one way to express identity. But the numerous contexts in which identity is required won’t allow it.

One reason there will never be a single, centralized monolithic system (the opposite of a metasystem) is because the characteristics that would make any system ideal in one context will disqualify it in another.

It makes sense to employ a government issued digital identity when interacting with government services (a single overall identity neither implies nor prevents correlation of identifiers between individual government departments).

But in many cultures, employers and employees would not feel comfortable using government identifiers to log in at work. A government identifier might be used to convey taxation information; it might even be required when a person is first offered employment. But the context of employment is sufficiently autonomous that it warrants its own identity, free from daily observation via a government-run technology.

Customers and individuals browsing the Web meanwhile will in many cases want higher levels of privacy than is likely to be provided by any employer.

So when it comes to digital identity, it is not only a matter of having identity providers run by different parties (including individuals themselves), but of having identity systems that offer different (and potentially contradictory) features.

A universal system must embrace differentiation, while recognizing that each of us is simultaneously�and in different contexts�a citizen, an employee, a customer, and a virtual persona.

This demonstrates, from yet another angle, that different identity systems must exist in a metasystem. It implies we need a simple encapsulating protocol (a way of agreeing on and transporting things). We also need a way to surface information through a unified user experience that allows individuals and organizations to select appropriate identity providers and features as they go about their daily activities.

The universal identity metasystem must not be another monolith. It must be polycentric (federation implies this) and also polymorphic (existing in different forms). This will allow the identity ecology to emerge, evolve, and self-organize.

Systems like RSS and HTML are powerful because they carry any content. We need to see that identity itself will have several�perhaps many�contexts, and yet can be expressed in a metasystem.

6. Human Integration

The universal identity metasystem must define the human user to be a component of the distributed system integrated through unambiguous human-machine communication mechanisms offering protection against identity attacks. (Starts here…)

We have done a pretty good job of securing the channel between Web servers and browsers through the use of cryptography�a channel that might extend for thousands of miles. But we have failed to adequately protect the two or three foot channel between the browser’s display and the brain of the human who uses it. This immeasurably shorter channel is the one under attack from phishers and pharmers.

No wonder. What identities is the user dealing with as she navigates the Web? How understandably is identity information conveyed to her? Do our digital identity systems interface with users in ways that objective studies have shown to work? Identity information currently takes the form of certificates. Do studies show certificates are meaningful to users?

What exactly are we doing? Whatever it is, we’ve got to do it better: the identity system must extend to and integrate the human user.

Carl Ellison and his colleagues have coined the term ‘ceremony’ to describe interactions that span a mixed network of human and cybernetic system components�the full channel from Web server to human brain. A ceremony goes beyond cyber protocols to ensure the integrity of communication with the user.

This concept calls for profoundly changing the user’s experience so it becomes predictable and unambiguous enough to allow for informed decisions.

Since the identity system has to work on all platforms, it must be safe on all platforms. The properties that lead to its safety can’t be based on obscurity or the fact that the underlying platform or software is unknown or has a small adoption.

One example is United Airlines’ Channel 9. It carries a live conversation between the cockpit of one’s plane and air traffic control. The conversation on this channel is very important, technical, and focused. Participants don’t “chat”�all parties know precisely what to expect from the tower and the airplane. As a result, even though there is a lot of radio noise and static, it is easy for the pilot and controller to pick out the exact content of the communication. When things go wrong, the broken predictability of the channel marks the urgency of the situation and draws upon every human faculty to understand and respond to the danger. The limited semiotics of the channel mean there is very high reliability in communications.

We require the same kind of bounded and highly predictable ceremony for the exchange of identity information. A ceremony is not a “whatever feels good” sort of thing. It is predetermined.

But isn’t this limitation of possibilities at odds with our ideas about computing? Haven’t many advances in computing come about through ambiguity and unintended consequences that would be ruled out in the austere light of ceremony?

These are valid questions. But we definitely don’t want unintended consequences when figuring out who we are talking to or what personal identification information to reveal.

The question is how to achieve very high levels of reliability in the communication between the system and its human users. In large part, this can be measured objectively through user testing.

7. Consistent Experience Across Contexts

The unifying identity metasystem must guarantee its users a simple, consistent experience while enabling separation of contexts through multiple operators and technologies.

Let’s project ourselves into a future where we have a number of contextual identity choices. For example:

• Browsing: a self-asserted identity for exploring the Web (giving away no real data)
• Personal: a self-asserted identity for sites with which I want an ongoing but private relationship (including my name and a long-term e-mail address)
• Community: a public identity for collaborating with others
• Professional: a public identity for collaborating issued by my employer
• Credit card: an identity issued by my financial institution
• Citizen: an identity issued by my government

We can expect that different individuals will have different combinations of these digital identities, as well as others.

To make this possible, we must “thingify” digital identities�make them into “things” the user can see on the desktop, add and delete, select and share. (We have chosen to “localize” the more venerable word “reify”.) How usable would today’s computers be had we not invented icons and lists that consistently represent folders and documents? We must do the same with digital identities.

What type of digital identity is acceptable in a given context? The properties of potential candidates will be specified by the Web service from which a user wants to obtain a service. Matching thingified digital identities can then be displayed to the user, who can select between them and use them to understand what information is being requested. This allows the user to control what is released.

Different relying parties will require different kinds of digital identities. And two things are clear:

• A single relying party will often want to accept more than one kind of identity, and
• A user will want to understand his or her options and select the best identity for the context

Putting all the laws together, we can see that the request, selection, and proffering of identity information must be done such that the channel between the parties is safe. The user experience must also prevent ambiguity in the user’s consent, and understanding of the parties involved and their proposed uses. These options need to be consistent and clear. Consistency across contexts is required for this to be done in a way that communicates unambiguously with the human system components.

As users, we need to see our various identities as part of an integrated world that nonetheless respects our need for independent contexts.

You’ll find the details in a press release here;

Highlights of the actions announced today include: posting Version 1.0 releases of technical documentation for Microsoft protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007; posting nearly 5,000 pages of new technical documentation for the Microsoft Office binary file formats for Word, Excel and PowerPoint (.doc, .xls, .xlsb and .ppt); and making significant strides in the company’s efforts to foster more open engagement with other members of the IT community.

“Today’s actions represent Microsoft’s continued fulfillment of the commitments it made in its Interoperability Principles,” said Craig Shank, general manager of Interoperability at Microsoft. “Microsoft’s cumulative posting of approximately 50,000 pages of technical documentation on MSDN provides consistent, open access for all developers, which enhances the ease and opportunities for working with Microsoft’s high-volume products. Moreover, our work with partners, competitors and customers to engage in the technical nuts-and-bolts of real-world interoperability provides great ongoing opportunities for collaboration to address the challenges of today’s diverse IT environment.”

The press release also talks about three other initiatives that underway, the first of which is highly important to anybody doing work with the Chinese UOF standard which is getting a lot of airtime here in Asia;

1. Working with Beihang University to develop Uniform Office Format (UOF) translators for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint so that users will have more options to open and save UOF documents in Microsoft Office 2007 and 2003; more information can be found on the project page on SourceForge.
2. Designing a new translator to read from Open XML to HTML, which will provide the opportunity for independent software vendors(ISVs) to enable their customers to launch Open XML documents using lightweight browser-friendly applications; more information can be found on the project page on CodePlex.
3. Developing PowerTools PowerShell commands for Open XML to enable IT administrators to perform document management tasks; more information can be found up on CodePlex.

Doug Mahugh has some pointers for anybody looking for additional support for the documentation that was released today;

The documentation is supported on a group of User Forums that are organized by general topic. If you have specific questions about the details, that’s the place to get them answered, and for more information about the things we’re doing to enable interoperability with Office see today’s press release or the Microsoft interop site.

As  I have said on this blog a few times now, there is still a lot of work to do, but this should be a sign that we’re committed to following through on the promises that we have made around interoperability.

Stay tuned for a lot more during coming months.

The text is based upon an interview with the current ISO Secretary-General, Alan Bryden, where he comments on the recent process to standardize OpenXML as IS29500.

Here are a couple of choice paragraphs;

On some of the public commentary from the press and from various blogs;

“Some of the negative publicity is quite extreme,” Bryden said in written answers to questions from Reuters.
“It’s not exactly pleasant for me to see ISO vilified, particularly when much of the extreme criticism is based on false assumptions and a lack of understanding of what ISO is and how it works.”

On the Fast Track process;

Bryden said criticisms that a fast-track process was abused to rush through the Microsoft standard were unfounded, and said the process was not new but had been used for 267 standards over the last 20 years, 212 of which were still current.

On what ISO do next with the process;

Still, he said there were lessons to learn. “The experience with ISO/IEC 29500, along with the results of other standards development activities, will indeed assist in determining whether further continued improvements should be made.”

And finally, on the issue of multiple standards in similar domains;

“In such cases, multiple standards can exist and it is the market that eventually decides which will survive,” he said.

I’ll leave you to read the whole article here.

Many have asked or speculated that the recent announcement of ODF in Service Pack 2 is an indication that Microsoft is quietly stepping away from Open XML. Some ask… “Is Microsoft abandoning Open XML?”

In a word, no.

That should be pretty clear.

He goes on to say;

We will continue to drive adoption of the compatibility pack for Open XML, which has now surpassed 40 Million individual downloads and gaining significant uptake in large-scale deployments. We will continue to develop and ship developer tools, translators, code samples, documentation, MSDN content and other material intended to educate people on how Open XML can help them solve specific business problems. Open XML is prominently featured in many Office Business Applications.

As to why we’re waiting for Office 14 to fully support IS29500, I think Gray did an excellent job of answering this in an earlier post of his;

Office 14 will update our support for IS29500. The timing for this might seem strange, but I do hope the rationale is clear. ODF 1.1 is a completed specification. The final version of IS29500 is not published today. While we do support a significant portion of IS29500 already, the BRM changes and other issues raised in public forums will inform us on how to best move forward with IS29500… and it gives me a little time to address the compatibility considerations that will be an important part of any file format related changes in Office. ODF has a potential upside in expanding interoperability, but as always, business continuity requirements will have a significant effect on our approach to these file format changes. Our customers will accept nothing less…

On a related note, a number of blogs are talking about the release of the 11.5.0 update for Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac this morning, which adds additional support for folks wanting to use OpenXML in that version of office.

Here are some of the changes;

Adds read/write compatibility for Open XML Format (.docx, .xlsx, etc.) files if installed with the Open XML Format Converter, Better stability and printing/page setup fixes for Word, Better paste compatibility with Office 2008 for all apps, Powerpoint fixes for stability with large documents

You’ll find the Microsoft KB article that talks about the release of the update here.

One such comment was made in passing during the final ministerial panel session of the OECD meeting in Seoul this week, and it was;

“The policy response to complexity is often non-determination.”, Hon. David Cunliffe, New Zealand’s Minister for Health, Telecommunications and Information Technology.

I think there is a really important lesson in there for the information technology industry. Behaviors that we take for granted, and even enjoy on occasions, are tough for many of our political leaders and decision makers to reconcile.

Many (not all) technologists and software developers are a strange hybrid of engineer and artist, using their talents to design and build solutions and often defending their work and beliefs in the way that any passionate artist would.

As a result we tend to categorize each other into groups who believe one thing, or believe the opposite… if you’re for OpenXML then you must by extrapolation be against ODF, if you’re a supporter of free software then you much be against the traditional commercial software industry.

There are plenty of individuals who don’t fit this stereotype, but if you search the web today they’re hard to find. While for many people this is a highly unfair categorization it is one that plays out in the blogosphere and very often in the professional press. We saw a lot of it during the process to standardize OpenXML where the press worked hard to represent the process as an entertaining war between OpenXML and ODF.

During the process to standardize OpenXML within ISO anybody coming out with a middle ground view was immediately categorized and dismissed as having an interest in one side of the argument or the other. Patrick Durusau is probably a good example that will be understood by those who saw the way he was treated in the blogosphere during the later stages of the process. I sincerely believe that Partick carried a helpful and neutral view of the overall landscape of document format standards, but for some that just was not good enough.

The average politician lives in a world of negotiation, give and take and mediation. I’m sure that many of the arguments put forwards by the software communities are nothing short of confusing and mostly useless in their world. When one side declares that their argument is absolutely correct while the other side of the argument declares that they’re the ones who are absolutely correct it is impossible to make a determination - with no middle ground and no room for discussion or negotiation.

For Information and Communication Technology to reach the potential that we all know it carries we need to see some large scale policy commitments from governments covering issues such as technology availability, privacy protection, security education and strong cyber security policy and legislation.

Those big decisions will be tough for political leaders to make while conflicting arguments continue to be put forwards in the way they are today.

Non determination on these issues is probably our worst nightmare.

The arguments against Net Neutrality have never really been clear to me. Microsoft’s position is to support the drive for continued neutrality of services provided on the Internet, which makes sense to me personally as we deal with issues of connecting diverse communities to the network and see the delivery of services here in Asia that may not be quite so relevant in Western Europe or the United States.

I’ll give you examples of two sets of arguments put forwards by different providers which really brought clarity to the issue for me. For the sake of simplicity (or cowardice on my part!) I’ll just call them “TelCo A” and “TelCo B”, you can easily research (or work out) who holds which position on the issue.

TelCo A was against Net Neutrality, instead putting forwards an argument for what they called intelligent networks capable of doing more caching of data and selectively managing services based upon consumer demand and requirements. The rational behind this argument was based upon a rapidly growing amount of data passing through their backbone services, projected to be around 50,000 terabytes a day by 2010, making it essential to manage data flows to ensure that service would be consistent well into the future.

TelCo B was in support of Net Neutrality, their argument was that innovation on the Internet today is very often consumer and user driven, the role of the TelCo was to provide connectivity not to decide what would run across those connections. TelCo B made a strong case for an open and neutral Internet providing a platform for innovation, increased societal connections and economic growth.

The difference between TelCo A and TelCo B? Simple really.

TelCo A has a substantial investment in copper cable to millions of doorsteps delivering limited bandwidth to broadband users. TelCo B has made huge investments in recent years in delivering fibre to those same doorsteps offering comparably infinite bandwidth to the same households.

A notably simplistic view of the issue, but all the same a clarifying one.

I’ve pulled a few links from different stories on cNet Asia’s site.

They are carrying details of the handset here, they have a first take review here, and Jason S has blogged about it here.

Jason talks a little about the features of the phone in his blog entry;

Omnia is simply stunning as it comes feature-packed with a 5-megapixel camera that has image stabilizer and face-smile detection inbuilt (hope Sony and Nokia are tuned in, too). The party doesn’t stop here. The phone will also support DivX, XviD, WMV and MP4 videos.

It will also have an integrated GPS unit to help you find your way if you are lost–or if you want to explore your neighborhood more. Omnia also has the now industry standard of Bluetooth, USB mass storage and also the more important Wi-Fi.

From cNet’s story;

Notable features:
• Quadband GSM with EGDE and HSDPA
• Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
• 3.2-inch WQVGA display with TouchWiz UI
• 8GB/16GB onboard memory with microSD expansion card slot
• 5-megapixel camera with autofocus
• Wi-Fi; GPS (with A-GPS); USB 2.0; Bluetooth 2.0
• 3.5mm audio jack
• Automatic screen orientation
• Multimedia player and FM radio
• 112 x 56.9 x 12.5mm

Availability: Mid-June in Southeast Asia; July in Europe; August for rest of the world.

It has been a while since I upgraded my handset, I think it is time for a new phone!

Has anybody seen them in stock in Singapore anywhere yet?

The goal of the session was for business leaders from around the world to express their views on the topic being discussed, and reach conclusions that will be expressed in a final report to be delivered to the Ministerial Meeting later in the week.

With the permission of the authors of the final report I thought I would share some of these outcomes with you, they make interesting and thought provoking reading;

We, the business community, envisage an Internet that is global in scope, interconnected in fact, inclusive by design, secure, reliable and available, and serving users who are increasingly mobile.

We see an Internet that is a key enabler of:

A virtuous circle of investment and innovation spurred by a growing ecosystem of services providers, application developers, device and hardware manufacturers

Innovation fueled by creativity, enabled by technology and empowering creators and users

Economic growth and social benefit in national and regional economies driven by new business models, technologies and services, as well as by greater efficiency and productivity of existing business models and services

Expanded access to and quality of education and skills development, including from ICTs,from early schooling through life-long learning, resulting in increased employment opportunities and social welfare, both within and across borders

Increased user choice of applications, products and services, provided through a wide variety of high capacity platforms, which are more available, affordable, and user-friendly

Better access to health care, particularly for those in remote areas or with fewer financial resources, through tele-medicine and related services, applications, and capabilities

Increased participation by individuals in the Internet economy not just as consumers but also as producers of information, content and services within the context of evolving uses of the Internet

Greater respect and empowerment for all stakeholders - building upon cultural, social and gender diversity and improved opportunities and mechanisms for greater collaboration and communication between across those stakeholder groups

Increased trust and confidence in the Internet, its infrastructure, and the applications and services that protect all users, especially children and the elderly

Sustainability and an eco-conscious society driven and supported by innovative ICT solutions

The report then goes on to articulate several areas where the business stakeholders felt that Government policy makers needed to act to carry these ideas forwards;

While business has the principal responsibility to bring expertise, investment and creativity to this process, the appropriate balance of government policies can continue to positively drive the future benefits of the Internet.

Therefore, for this vision to be realized, certain framework conditions must be put in place through multi-stakeholder cooperation to support the development of a broad range of sophisticated and increasingly “real-time” services transactions, communications, networks and interactions. Among these conditions are:

Support for innovation and investment

An environment characterized by appropriate incentives and legal protections, where innovation and creativity can flourish across communities, business models and disciplines

Open, fair and competitive marketplaces for new and existing market players

Incentives for investment in high speed communications infrastructure and next generation networks, as well as new media and information technologies, that will provide adequate capacity, security and capabilities for future Internet supported development and connectivity

Respect for Intellectual Property rights, and further development of systems to enforce those rights

Transparent legal and regulatory frameworks that are applied fairly with predictable outcomes

Focus on privacy and security

Continued and enhanced respect for both the privacy of personal information and the benefits of global information flows and practical solutions that might be applicable such as outreach, coordination and accountability across and for all stakeholders

A stable, reliable and trusted infrastructure capable of addressing and responding to emerging risks and threats

Better disaster preparedness in co-operation with the private sector

Market driven standards

Respect for recognized international standards that are established through market-driven, consensus-based mechanisms

As you read this text remember that it is being expressed in terms that are designed to be relevant at a ministerial or national policy level, not to directly address technical issues or debates - although of course the two are closely related. Many of these issues and statements are in the realm of the obvious for the technical community, but it will still take time before policy makers completely buy into the arguments that are being made in support of the Internet as a commerce and service delivery platform.

If you’re interested in reading more then the document can be downloaded from the BIAC site here.

As the week has progressed there have been a few debates that have been both fascinating and enlightening, I’ll try and find time later in the week to document a couple of them.

My input to the meeting was pretty straight forwards, the goal was to demonstrate that the evolution of services offered by software has been on a steady trajectory for some years now, and at every stage has offered an increased level of opportunity for those who choose to take advantage of the services offered by the network - then to go on to talk a little about what the future might hold and how government could support that future.

The evolution of the network and the increased level of opportunity that can be witnessed at various points in time is obviously interesting to watch.

Twenty five years ago the PC was a stand alone device offering little or no options for connectivity for the average user or business, as a result data was also stand alone and the effectiveness of your device directly related to the amount of data that you had personally spent time inputting.

Some fifteen or so years ago we moved on a step, the world started to talk about client-server computing and the PC began to integrate with services that were offered by an organizations data center - the PC suddenly became a lot more useful, but in many if not most cases that usefulness still ended at the boundary of your own organization.

Ten years ago the Internet began to become mainstream, some had been using the services of the Internet for longer, many had not. It does not need to be said that this was a pretty revolutionary point in time. Suddenly individuals could search for and obtain information on just about any topic they could dream of. At the same time huge opportunity opened up for business, allowing companies new and old to open store fronts that reached many hundreds of millions of customers.

Then the final stage I talked about was the idea of seamless computing, again a concept that is familiar to many in the technical world, a concept that allows diverse organizations to share data and business processes to build new services that were previously just not possible. This era includes many of the ideas that are still evolving around cloud computing and hosted services.

I chose to talk about the future in the form of three scenarios, looking at the future for the highly connected individual, the highly connected business and the highly connected society. In all three cases we can already see trends and expectations starting to emerge. Much of my presentation focused on extrapolating these trends, predicting the future is a dangerous game, who am I to say what will or won’t become components of how we live our lives in the future.

If you’re interested you can see the details of the presentation here, but at a high level the idea was to provide more empowerment for connected individuals, more opportunity for the connected business and to focus on an increased level of individual participation in the connected society.

The presentation closed with some suggestions for government policy makers around areas that need focus and attention as we create a secure and inclusive internet for the coming years,I outlined the following;

• Provide a framework and foundation for innovation and sustainable growth through the promotion of intellectual property rights, choice and interoperability and a competitive environment for software innovation;
• Promote the open and free flow of people, products, services, and ideas through free and fair trade, preserving freedom of expression online and supporting immigration policies that foster cross-border educational and professional opportunities;
• Create a more trustworthy computing environment by strengthening laws around cybercrime, online safety and privacy in accordance with global and regional norms including the Council of Europe’s Convention on cybercrime and the OECD and APEC Privacy principles;
• Transform education, learning and access to technology and promote innovative IT solutions for healthcare.
• Most important of all… move beyond “The Internet Economy” and return to “The Economy”

The final point is very important here in the Asia Pacific region, and probably other areas of the world as well. I still see many governments in the region segmenting their digital strategy and leaving it to be dealt with by an IT agency or individual technocrats.

The idea of the internet, and the benefits that it brings to individuals, businesses and society as a whole is no longer a new one.

Eventually I would like to think that we will stop thinking about “The Internet Economy” or “eGovernment”, and start thinking about “The Economy” and just “Government” - where technology plays a pivotal but tightly integrated role in the way that services and government business process are delivered.