Business & management:
• With auditing due to begin in 2010, it has been predicted that 130 EDRMS experts will be needed to ensure that all the organisations needing to comply with the Public Records Act will be ready in time.
• Gated communities for people above a certain age is expected to become a trend in the UK with the aging population’s need for retirement housing seen as a market with investing in for the property industry.
• The UN Environmental Programme report on sustainable energy investment, showing that investors are continuing to pour money into the renewable energy industries is available here.
• The government of South Korea is hoping that the location of the city of Songdo will make it a new regional business hub for north-east Asia. It has been designed as a ”ubiquitous city” with wireless networks and radio-frequency identification linking all major information systems - residential, business, medical and governmental.
Education
•. The way we read online is different from the way we read books, and web pages and blogs need to be designed to allow for the differences. Libraries have just launched a new series of blogs, so it’s timely to read posts 1 & 2 about avoiding “visual noise”, from the Visual Speak blog.
Environment & sustainability:
• Scientists have discovered that as climate change raises temperatures, plants in the French alps are “moving” to higher altitudes to regain the cool temperatures they prefer.
• An essay on one way that cities could have sustainable urban agriculture from a professor of environmental health sciences.
• The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has developed a structured methodology that allows businesses to carry out an Ecosystem Services Review. The review helps managers to proactively develop strategies to manage risks and opportunities arising from their company’s dependence and impact on ecosystems.
• The idea of bulb-hoarding, now that incandescent light-bulbs are on the way out is an issue even in the UK, where the change-over is still voluntary - people have already begun stock-piling.
• A mixed-use apartment building in San Francisco is sustainable while providing 106 apartments for the previously homeless as well as retail space and an arts venue.
Health & wellbeing:
• The new edition of the Atlas of socioeconomic deprivation in New Zealand has been released by the Ministry of Health. It includes maps and is based on the district health board areas.
Law & Government:
• Some Britons are protesting at the way councils are changing the way their streets look and removing their local heritage, by removing trees or lampposts. While protected streetscapes in heritage areas have protection, ordinary streets don’t.
• The new targeted based system of local area agreements for councils in the UK has a new “Local Priorities Website” where people can check on which targets have been prioritised by the council in their area. A large number of councils have chosen to give high priority to the volunteer sector.
People, culture & diversity:
• A new way of getting your news out has been launched by an online publisher. Voxy.co.nz is an online community newswire, where news can be added (and commented on) by anybody.
• At the World Forum on Human Right, UNESCO has announced the launch of an international coalition of cities against racism and discrimination.
• The Library of Congress (LC) has been hosting a series of lectures on “Digital Natives” – the generation of young people growing up who never know a time without digital technologies. The series of the lectures will be available on the LC’s webcasting pages.
• Cyber bullying is often carried out using text messaging, but increasingly, social networking sites are also being used.
• A draft version of the UK’s Equality Framework for Local Government is available for Britons to provide their feedback. The framework looks at improving performance on equality and diversity for council communities.
People in the UK are afraid to interact with other people’s children, in case they are accused of being paedophiles, according to a new study by Civitas. The Civitas blog posting about the report gives some examples, and talks about the impact on the voluntary sector.
Science, technology & transport:
• InternetNZ has issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the research and analysis of broadband strategy options for New Zealand.
• Research in 14 countries shows that the majority of people are not yet convinced the mobile devices are safe enough to use for financial transactions.
• Plans to extend London’s congestion zone are not to go ahead, according to London’s mayor, although transport experts wanted the charge to be applied as a way to handle gridlock in the outer suburbs.
Thursday, 3 July 2008
Friday, 27 June 2008
From the LOGIS news alert subscriptions (ending 27/06):
Business & management:
• As part of the NZ Tourism Strategy 2015, a series of guides have been produced that help tourism operators ensure that their businesses are sustainable.
• The international snow sports community is backing the Winter Games NZ planned to take place next year, with about 800 athletes from around the world projected to attend.
• The way people manage their documentation at work is rapidly changing. Increasing amounts of data and documentation are being stored online, and the new name for digital document storage and use is “cloud computing”.
• eBay is going to the European Parliament in an attempt to get what it considers to be outdated trading laws changed, because they allow traditional manufacturers to limit the impact of online trading.
• There are plans in Dubai to build the world’s first “moving” building – an 80 storey tower with rotating floors that will change the shape of the building.
• Sustainable procurement is an approach that many businesses are taking not just because it’s good for the environment, but because it can lower costs and result in more valuable business practices.
• The UK’s Idea and Development Agency has a series of web pages on strategic workforce planning, including a section on producing a workforce development plan.
Environment & sustainability:
• Water calculators are increasingly seen on websites looking at sustainability issues, and now local bodies here in NZ are using them as well – North Shore City offers one, and Rodney links you through to a very detailed Australian water calculator. (According to NIWA, the mean annual rainfall for Auckland from 1971-2000 was 1240 mm, if you feel like checking your water use.)
• A UN meeting on waste management has discussed the safe disposal of old cell phones and computers and given consideration to writing new guidelines for the disposal of “e-waste”.
• Floods, drought and disease are resulting in increasing numbers of “climate refugees” around the world, with people being forced to leave regions or countries as a result of the impact of climate change.
• Sales of heat pumps have risen sharply in NZ in recent years. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority want users to remember some “smart tips” to ensure that they don’t waste electricity unnecessarily in the way they use heat pumps.
• The sites to go on a shortlist for Britain’s first eco-towns are being criticised due to a series of issues, including inadequate public transport links.
Health & wellbeing:
• Both NZ & international research shows that tobacco displays are an unhealthy influence on children and on people trying to quit.
• The Legal Services Agency has produced an education kit “The Law and Mental Health”, which provides information from acts like the Mental Health Act, the Privacy Act, etc.
• A global opinion poll covering people from 19 countries, shows that a high proportion are against the use of torture, even in the case of terrorists who have information that could save innocent lives.
• RFID technology is increasing in use (many libraries use it now to make issues and returns faster). Dutch scientists say that they may interfere with lifesaving hospital equipment, while UK computer scientists say that they could actually help patients.
Law & Government:
• As part of the Thames / Coromandel Blueprint Project, almost 150 children have supplied the project partners with some definite themes and in-depth submissions on what they feel the future should be like for the Coromandel area.
• Community engagement and community cohesion is a UK report that looks at the challenges of bringing together government policies on getting people involved in their community and promoting cohesion rather than conflict between newer and more established communities.
• The UK’s Local Government Association is urging councils and their staff to avoid clichés and jargon and was prompted to publish a list of such words by the news that one council had advised staff to stop using “brainstorming” because it might offend epileptics, and start using “thought shower”.
• A UK government working group is proposing that all radio stations transfer from analogue to digital by 2020. But while 90% of households in the UK have a digital TV, some people are still buying analogue sets because they are unaware that they need extra equipment to allow the TV to receive digital signals.
• UK researchers are working on CCTV cameras that can “hear” sounds like a window smashing or that can react to crowd noise.
• The UK Ministry of Defence is concerned that young recruits from the Facebook generation don’t take data security seriously enough.
People, culture & diversity:
• A recent US survey of the baby boomer generation, shows that of those not already working in them, over half are interested in “encore careers” – ie jobs that combine income, personal meaning and social impact.
• Arguments about whether or not climate change is real are meaningless for a Colombian culture that has survived for centuries, but can see every day that nature is changing all around them.
Science, technology & transport:
• The International Civil Aviation Organisation has produced a carbon footprint calculator that will allow travellers to estimate the carbon footprint of any flight that they make.
• Backlogs in the patent system are bad for business and create uncertainty for innovators – there are between five and ten million inventions globally queuing for approval.
• The Internet’s regulator ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has approved a proposal to relax rules around “top-level” domain names, such as .com or .nz, and has also approved domain names in Asian, Arabic or other scripts.
• “Green, clean and never seen” may be the nanotechnology motto, but researchers have only just started to look into whether it may pose risks to environmental or human health, and any damage may take years to become obvious.
• As part of the NZ Tourism Strategy 2015, a series of guides have been produced that help tourism operators ensure that their businesses are sustainable.
• The international snow sports community is backing the Winter Games NZ planned to take place next year, with about 800 athletes from around the world projected to attend.
• The way people manage their documentation at work is rapidly changing. Increasing amounts of data and documentation are being stored online, and the new name for digital document storage and use is “cloud computing”.
• eBay is going to the European Parliament in an attempt to get what it considers to be outdated trading laws changed, because they allow traditional manufacturers to limit the impact of online trading.
• There are plans in Dubai to build the world’s first “moving” building – an 80 storey tower with rotating floors that will change the shape of the building.
• Sustainable procurement is an approach that many businesses are taking not just because it’s good for the environment, but because it can lower costs and result in more valuable business practices.
• The UK’s Idea and Development Agency has a series of web pages on strategic workforce planning, including a section on producing a workforce development plan.
Environment & sustainability:
• Water calculators are increasingly seen on websites looking at sustainability issues, and now local bodies here in NZ are using them as well – North Shore City offers one, and Rodney links you through to a very detailed Australian water calculator. (According to NIWA, the mean annual rainfall for Auckland from 1971-2000 was 1240 mm, if you feel like checking your water use.)
• A UN meeting on waste management has discussed the safe disposal of old cell phones and computers and given consideration to writing new guidelines for the disposal of “e-waste”.
• Floods, drought and disease are resulting in increasing numbers of “climate refugees” around the world, with people being forced to leave regions or countries as a result of the impact of climate change.
• Sales of heat pumps have risen sharply in NZ in recent years. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority want users to remember some “smart tips” to ensure that they don’t waste electricity unnecessarily in the way they use heat pumps.
• The sites to go on a shortlist for Britain’s first eco-towns are being criticised due to a series of issues, including inadequate public transport links.
Health & wellbeing:
• Both NZ & international research shows that tobacco displays are an unhealthy influence on children and on people trying to quit.
• The Legal Services Agency has produced an education kit “The Law and Mental Health”, which provides information from acts like the Mental Health Act, the Privacy Act, etc.
• A global opinion poll covering people from 19 countries, shows that a high proportion are against the use of torture, even in the case of terrorists who have information that could save innocent lives.
• RFID technology is increasing in use (many libraries use it now to make issues and returns faster). Dutch scientists say that they may interfere with lifesaving hospital equipment, while UK computer scientists say that they could actually help patients.
Law & Government:
• As part of the Thames / Coromandel Blueprint Project, almost 150 children have supplied the project partners with some definite themes and in-depth submissions on what they feel the future should be like for the Coromandel area.
• Community engagement and community cohesion is a UK report that looks at the challenges of bringing together government policies on getting people involved in their community and promoting cohesion rather than conflict between newer and more established communities.
• The UK’s Local Government Association is urging councils and their staff to avoid clichés and jargon and was prompted to publish a list of such words by the news that one council had advised staff to stop using “brainstorming” because it might offend epileptics, and start using “thought shower”.
• A UK government working group is proposing that all radio stations transfer from analogue to digital by 2020. But while 90% of households in the UK have a digital TV, some people are still buying analogue sets because they are unaware that they need extra equipment to allow the TV to receive digital signals.
• UK researchers are working on CCTV cameras that can “hear” sounds like a window smashing or that can react to crowd noise.
• The UK Ministry of Defence is concerned that young recruits from the Facebook generation don’t take data security seriously enough.
People, culture & diversity:
• A recent US survey of the baby boomer generation, shows that of those not already working in them, over half are interested in “encore careers” – ie jobs that combine income, personal meaning and social impact.
• Arguments about whether or not climate change is real are meaningless for a Colombian culture that has survived for centuries, but can see every day that nature is changing all around them.
Science, technology & transport:
• The International Civil Aviation Organisation has produced a carbon footprint calculator that will allow travellers to estimate the carbon footprint of any flight that they make.
• Backlogs in the patent system are bad for business and create uncertainty for innovators – there are between five and ten million inventions globally queuing for approval.
• The Internet’s regulator ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has approved a proposal to relax rules around “top-level” domain names, such as .com or .nz, and has also approved domain names in Asian, Arabic or other scripts.
• “Green, clean and never seen” may be the nanotechnology motto, but researchers have only just started to look into whether it may pose risks to environmental or human health, and any damage may take years to become obvious.
Thursday, 19 June 2008
From the LOGIS news alert subscriptions (ending 20/06):
Business & management:
• New laws in the European Union (EU) require that a chemical is safe before it goes out in the commercial market. This will have a huge impact on manufacturers exporting to the EU, especially in countries like the US, where the law requires the opposite - regulators must prove that a chemical is harmful before it can be restricted or removed from the market.
• On behalf of the World Editors Forum, 5 prominent newspaper designers have selected (globally) the top print newspapers and the top newspaper website designs.
Education
• Rising petrol costs are resulting in a sharp rise in the number of people looking into online or distance education, according to US website Degree.com.
• In another application for distance learning, a US school district has received federal funding to develop a distance learning programme for use if an emergency such as a flu pandemic forced schools to close.
Environment & sustainability:
• A recent Urban Land Institute conference in the US has highlighted the need for developers to switch to more compact walkable development.
• A new report: “Sustainable performance delivered” suggests that regulatory and consumer pressures haven’t resulted in more than superficial sustainability measures in many corporations. However, international investors are a driving force in moving corporations towards embracing sustainability.
• Organisations from around the world have been selected for the first Sustainable Cities Awards, at the Financial Times / ULI Sustainable Cities Conference in London. The awards recognise new ideas and best practice in the concept of sustainability in real estate.
Health & wellbeing:
• The Bioethics Council releases its report today on pre-birth testing. The report “Who gets born? A report on the cultural, ethical and spiritual issues raised by pre-birth testing” comes from the Council, but takes into account the feedback provided by over 700 members of the public and their opinions about the issues around such tests.
Law & Government:
• The Centre for Cities has released a report “Smarter, Stronger Cities: UK Urban Policy Innovations and Lessons for the US”. In the past, UK cities looked to the US for ideas on urban planning, but now, the US has more to learn from UK cities.
• Stirling has received £1.25m in funding from the Big Lottery Fund and the Scottish Government, so that it can become the UK’s first carbon neutral city.
• The Office of the Auditor-General has released 2 reports today: “Public sector purchases, grants, and gifts: managing funding arrangements with external parties” and “Procurement guidance for public entities” (an update of the 2001 good practice guide). In addition, there is an example that looks at funding NGOs, but may provide useful lessons to other public bodies: “Managing funding to non-government organisations – from principles to practice.”
• The Dept of Labour are asking for public submissions on a plan of action to prevent and combat people trafficking. So far NZ Police have found no evidence of people trafficking in NZ, but the Dept of Labour wants to see this position maintained in the future.
• NZ is bidding for election to the UN Human Rights Council for the 2009-2012 term, supported by Australia and Canada.
• Submission forms for those wanting to provide feedback on the proposal for compulsory third party insurance can be found on the Ministry of Transport’s homepage.
• 2 refrigeration engineers have been fined for releasing an ozone depleting substance last year, while they were repairing a drink chiller.
• The Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is a new legal instrument adopted by the UN, which will enable people to submit complaints on violations of their economic, social and cultural rights to an international human rights body.
People, culture & diversity:
• In an article in the Journal of Physics A, researchers have found that the way people behave on the Internet, doesn’t follow the normal bell curve of statistics. Variations in behaviour from one user to another are extreme, so that modelling Web server traffic may not be simple.
• Diversity is not something that l'Académie Française wants for the French language. The French parliament has just amended the constitution to recognise its 75 regional minority languages, but France has still not ratified the European charter for minority languages, and l'Académie Française believes that minority languages are “an attack on French national identity”.
Science, technology & transport:
• “Scientists for Global Responsibility” maintains a section on their website about the influence of the military on science & technology research. Their latest report is about the influence of the military on research at UK universities.
• Honda has begun the first commercial production of a zero-emission, hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicle.
• “Six degrees : our future on a hotter planet” by Mark Lynas has won the UK Royal Society’s prize for popular science writing. The book explains how Earth will change for every degree rise in temperature - from droughts to mass extinctions.
• The first of the reports from the Commerce Commission, that wasn’t good news for Telecom or Vodafone is available: “Broadband performance quality reports”, covering the March 2008 quarter.
• New laws in the European Union (EU) require that a chemical is safe before it goes out in the commercial market. This will have a huge impact on manufacturers exporting to the EU, especially in countries like the US, where the law requires the opposite - regulators must prove that a chemical is harmful before it can be restricted or removed from the market.
• On behalf of the World Editors Forum, 5 prominent newspaper designers have selected (globally) the top print newspapers and the top newspaper website designs.
Education
• Rising petrol costs are resulting in a sharp rise in the number of people looking into online or distance education, according to US website Degree.com.
• In another application for distance learning, a US school district has received federal funding to develop a distance learning programme for use if an emergency such as a flu pandemic forced schools to close.
Environment & sustainability:
• A recent Urban Land Institute conference in the US has highlighted the need for developers to switch to more compact walkable development.
• A new report: “Sustainable performance delivered” suggests that regulatory and consumer pressures haven’t resulted in more than superficial sustainability measures in many corporations. However, international investors are a driving force in moving corporations towards embracing sustainability.
• Organisations from around the world have been selected for the first Sustainable Cities Awards, at the Financial Times / ULI Sustainable Cities Conference in London. The awards recognise new ideas and best practice in the concept of sustainability in real estate.
Health & wellbeing:
• The Bioethics Council releases its report today on pre-birth testing. The report “Who gets born? A report on the cultural, ethical and spiritual issues raised by pre-birth testing” comes from the Council, but takes into account the feedback provided by over 700 members of the public and their opinions about the issues around such tests.
Law & Government:
• The Centre for Cities has released a report “Smarter, Stronger Cities: UK Urban Policy Innovations and Lessons for the US”. In the past, UK cities looked to the US for ideas on urban planning, but now, the US has more to learn from UK cities.
• Stirling has received £1.25m in funding from the Big Lottery Fund and the Scottish Government, so that it can become the UK’s first carbon neutral city.
• The Office of the Auditor-General has released 2 reports today: “Public sector purchases, grants, and gifts: managing funding arrangements with external parties” and “Procurement guidance for public entities” (an update of the 2001 good practice guide). In addition, there is an example that looks at funding NGOs, but may provide useful lessons to other public bodies: “Managing funding to non-government organisations – from principles to practice.”
• The Dept of Labour are asking for public submissions on a plan of action to prevent and combat people trafficking. So far NZ Police have found no evidence of people trafficking in NZ, but the Dept of Labour wants to see this position maintained in the future.
• NZ is bidding for election to the UN Human Rights Council for the 2009-2012 term, supported by Australia and Canada.
• Submission forms for those wanting to provide feedback on the proposal for compulsory third party insurance can be found on the Ministry of Transport’s homepage.
• 2 refrigeration engineers have been fined for releasing an ozone depleting substance last year, while they were repairing a drink chiller.
• The Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is a new legal instrument adopted by the UN, which will enable people to submit complaints on violations of their economic, social and cultural rights to an international human rights body.
People, culture & diversity:
• In an article in the Journal of Physics A, researchers have found that the way people behave on the Internet, doesn’t follow the normal bell curve of statistics. Variations in behaviour from one user to another are extreme, so that modelling Web server traffic may not be simple.
• Diversity is not something that l'Académie Française wants for the French language. The French parliament has just amended the constitution to recognise its 75 regional minority languages, but France has still not ratified the European charter for minority languages, and l'Académie Française believes that minority languages are “an attack on French national identity”.
Science, technology & transport:
• “Scientists for Global Responsibility” maintains a section on their website about the influence of the military on science & technology research. Their latest report is about the influence of the military on research at UK universities.
• Honda has begun the first commercial production of a zero-emission, hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicle.
• “Six degrees : our future on a hotter planet” by Mark Lynas has won the UK Royal Society’s prize for popular science writing. The book explains how Earth will change for every degree rise in temperature - from droughts to mass extinctions.
• The first of the reports from the Commerce Commission, that wasn’t good news for Telecom or Vodafone is available: “Broadband performance quality reports”, covering the March 2008 quarter.
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