Search results matching tag 'Government'

How can you provide antidotes to dishonesty?

209478 — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:48:00 GMT

Take inspiration from the Indonesian government. In the province of East Kalimantan, whose natural resources have been routinely plundered by corrupt government officials and businessmen, the government has opened almost 1,500 cafes without cashiers. At these ‘honesty cafes’, people are expected to take what they want and leave the appropriate payment behind. The cafes will first be introduced to schools, then offices and even the street.

“It is so important that Indonesia’s younger generation grow up with a better understanding of right and wrong, so they’re more disciplined and less likely to take part in corrupt activities," says a government spokesman. "This anti-corruption campaign targets the youth so that Indonesia can have a better future.” By 2010, they hope to have opened more than 10,000 similar cafes.

Ref. http://www.shapingtomorrow.com/trendAlert.cfm?id=1004
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/indonesia/090512/indonesias-honesty-cafes

Collaborative Individualism Emerges At Reboot Britain

2292853 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:32:00 GMT

This week's NESTA sponsored Reboot Britain conference brought together a mix of government, business, banks, technology, media people from the UK, and visitors from the USA that saw left leaning Labour/Liberal Democrat political views engage and collaborate with conservative Tory representatives. The crowd's reaction saw the many of those who are normally distrustful of government, financial institutions and conservative politics try to mingle more with what they historically view as the "other side" of the spectrum.

Opening remarks from conservative Jeremy Hunt MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport, had him lovingly embrace the Internet, new technology and the governments increasing integration of it into public services. He praised the transformative nature of new technology's impact in delivering high quality factual content to the world from ordinary citizens, with Wikipedia, and talked about a new effort to publish and provide archives of government documents online for access to all. Hunt said that politics has been stuck in a rut toward progress, with its stance to first fight online, then ignore it, and only now begin to embrace it. People have flipped politics on its head by rushing online to express views and grassroots organizse around issues in powerful ways that have not beeen witnessed before, making for the emergence of a new movement composed of "collaborative individualism."

"Huge change is possible with the Internet and the Internet also makes possible some very unpleasant things," he said. "The Internet is a powerful way to connect voters and as a politician I have to engage more intelligently with my constituents."

Hunt's speech received mixed reaction and a bix of cheeky tweet banter from a crowd of professionals who live on the bleeding edge of the technological world, think liberally and radically, and often wonder why the conservatives, and the government, with its recent release of the Digital Britain report, have taken so long to embrace new technology that the left and leaders like Al Gore have been pushing the agenda toward for years. Now, it seems, the people have collectively forced politics to adapt or be left behind.

Visiting Reboot Britain was a digital celebrity group of Americans called the Travelling Geeks, who mingled with the guests and presented panel sessions throughout the day, including Craig Newmark, the nerd who many people feel changed the world with Craigslist.org.

"The Internet makes public service people feel they can come out of the darkness, and feel liberated and my hidden agenda is helping people in government affect change, and talk, and accelerate collaboration across the Atlantic," he said. On the good side, most people want to be a positive influence, and on the evil side, noisy, idiotic spammers and trolls with extremist views pollute the channels of communication and need moderation to combat this ugly side.

To combat the ugly side of the Internet, people need a friendly "nudge" to do good, and regulations toward social media use among public service employees needs to be relaxed so that they can feel safe freely expressing views and using the tools to improve things, citing the example of Newmark's favourite project FixMyStreet.

I caught up with Newmark after his talk, and you can listen to his commentary here on this Audioboo.

Pock marking the day was an insulting and demeaning panel presentation asking "Is the Web Female?" that attracted a majority of female attendants, only to sucker-punch them with horrible commentary from two of the American panelists who behaved like the scary, exclusionary popular girls in a Beverly Hills 90210 high school class. While lifestreamer Megan Asha and technology journalist Sarah Lacy may be respected digital influencers in US circles they did themselves, nor the women in the audience, any favours by describing how women behave online as being "catty, gossipy" and wanting to shop a lot. The comments provoked anger among the audience:

"Disappointed is the web female session seemingly stymied by pointless focus on imaginary gender characteristics. A waste." tweeted @josiefraser

"A few minutes of listening to 'is the web female' debate and you lose the will to live." tweeted @hollandshurst.

"Finally giving up on 'Is the Web Female', which is relying on a narrow, depressing & slightly weird definition of "female" tweeted @justinpickard

Panelist Joanne Jacobs balanced out the nasty catty female debate by smashing stereotype demographics and openly confessing that she often gender-switches online to allow herself more freedom with masculine-style expression. MT Rainey brought home the concept that the web is neither male or female but simply a place where humanity gathers.

The day's closing address saw Howard Reingold outline ways to improve digital inclusion with digital literacy, and more activism.

"Boring blogs and Twitter accounts show that participating just isn't good enough, being an active citizen is a start but from passive consumption you have to move toward participation," he said. Reingold called for the end of crap content, miss-information, spam, porn spam and helping more people develop their own "crap detectors."

Master of ceremonies for the day was Policy Unplugged's Steve Moore who remarked at closing that he was thrilled to watch #rebootbritain trending above the dominant topic King of Pop Michael Jackson's death on Twitter.

Feeling gossipy, catty and like shopping so guess I should get online and surf the Web today,

-Lisa

Re: Should the Government ban logos on cigarette packets?

2304012 — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:08:47 GMT

So, as a consumer, I'm meant to ask for a pack of the gold and white ones...? Or a small pack of green tobacco with the gold trim? Ridiculous. Brands could still differentiate themselves with colours.... unless the govt goes whole-hog and imposes plain 'Brown' packaging with an imposed font. Either way he'll need to keep the tobacco companies sweet as he can't afford to lose that revenue stream...

Re: Is the government right to encourage young people to join the creative industries?

1818218 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:45:07 GMT

I think it is a good thing to encourage young people to consider a career agency side. It will raise awareness and enable talent from a wider gene pool than those with family already working in the industry.

Anyone for another???

2228399 — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:33:00 GMT

Virals seem to be flowing out of the Home Office as freely as Tequila shots on a Friday night. As following their Knife crime viral campaign they've just launched their new anti-binge drinking campaign - with a viral forming a central plank to the campaign.

I say "central plank" as although the campaign is cross-media with lots of different executions, the creative is designed to shock (and amuse to a point) and get people thinking and talking about the consequences of excessive drinking. So arguably the campaign's viral in its entirety, rather than just having a single viral aspect . . .

Having said that, they are actually running a viral film as part of the campaign:

One for the road anyone????

BBC's breathtaking bias against advertising

695124 — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:21:41 GMT

The Wethey Forecast seldom gets written on a Sunday. I’m normally tucked away from controversy on the golf course. But yesterday I listened to Radio 5 Live instead (for the sports coverage, which is excellent), and caught a remarkable example of the BBC’s mission to discredit advertising.

The programme, called ‘Classroom Commercials’ and presented by Rachel Burden, was broadcast at 11.30. It had been trailed all morning as a news item: ….’The Government has been looking at a major enquiry into the possible harmful effects of advertising on children’. To call the 25 minute feature a mish-mash would be generous.

It started with a reference to the junk food debate and a link to the “Put the fizz into science” promotion by Mentos. In return for repeating the Mentos and cola experiment, schools can receive £2000 of teaching equipment for chemistry lessons. Adidas contribute to physics teaching by allowing teachers to demonstrate the properties of the Predator football boot. Among the other ‘villains’ are apparently BAE and the nuclear industry, who supply teaching materials to schools. Almost unimaginable evil apparently flows from Disney helping with dance teaching in association with High School Musical, and Revlon who offered money off vouchers for a new fragrance. There were no commercials in the classroom (despite the title), but at 11.52 the programme was – hysterically – interrupted by a commercial promoting DAB radio receivers! Also the producers appeared to have forgotten that the Government itself uses advertising to talk to school age children. Kids are also allowed to listen to 5 Live and other radio stations, which don’t hesitate to mix editorial with news content – like the trail for this programme. It is hard to imagine a feature which was more contrived, more biased, more trivial, or more potty. If Peta Buscombe or Hamish Pringle are interested, I actually taped it, to make it easier to prepare a riposte to this rubbish. Meanwhile an army of thought police are presumably covering up brand names in schools all over Britain, lest the corruption children suffer in the classroom could in any way influence the way they react to the commercial world they encounter the rest of the time.