Business & management:
• The 4th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey “Smart growth and urban consolidation: the high social and economic costs” is available in full.
• The Public Relations Institute of New Zealand says the increase in public relations and communications staff in NZ reflects worldwide growth in the industry.
• The amount that NZers spend on travel within NZ has risen by nearly $1 billion over the last year, to about $8 billion a year.
Environment & sustainability:
• Celsias, the Wellington-based environmental web hub site and company, is to attend the prestigious DEMO ’08 invitation-only technology event in California next week.
• The EU has released a series of proposals that will increase the use of renewable energy and set legally enforceable targets for governments to achieve them.
• The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting for 2008 has been told that water stress (ie the escalating demand for fresh water) poses a risk to economic growth, human rights, health, safety and national security.
• A UK dairy farmer is planning to build a renewable energy centre that will produce enough energy to ensure that the local town of Tiverton is independent of fossil fuels by 2013.
• NZ has ranked 7th in the 2008 Environmental Performance Index, released at the World Economic Forum meeting – the performance of the US is described by the Yale compilers as a “national disgrace”.
Health & wellbeing:
• The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is advising town planners in the UK to give pedestrians and cyclists priority over cars in towns, as a means of combating a sedentary lifestyle.
Law & Government:
• A small group in London have taken a novel approach to improving an aspect of public policy in a very informal way, using a “barcamp”.
• Plans for the “community contracts” have been launched in the UK, raising the possibility that residents could win a rebate on their council tax if their local authority repeatedly fails to collect rubbish or tackle yobbish behaviour.
People, culture & diversity:
• The new war of the sexes is the “Daddy War”, where men who’ve been deprived of their role as a breadwinner, compete with their partners over childcare.
• Some students re-assess how damaging their social networking sites can be to their job prospects as they start to apply for their first jobs – employers overseas are increasingly using searches on such sites to assess applicants. But cleaning up your online image and removing a profile completely from a social networking site may not be that easy.
Science, technology & transport:
• A New York City Transportation commission is considering whether to introduce a charge on drivers entering New York City, in a similar way to the charge introduced for central London.
• A UK company is using the sewer system to provide super-fast broadband in some towns of 100 Mbps (megabits per second).
Friday, 25 January 2008
Friday, 18 January 2008
From the LOGIS news alert subscriptions (ending 18/01):
Business & management:
• Even a small office or business can have some kind of impact on the environment, by better use of recycling and re-examining how the business handles its waste.
• A win-win situation is possible with work-life balance, according to a company that specialises in attitude research.
• A group of leading newspaper executives will gather to discuss their list of 66 current trends, that they see having a future impact on the newspaper industry.
• Hays, a specialist recruiting company have identified the top 10 trends it believes will influence the recruitment market in 2008.
• The Reserve Bank’s first discussion papers for 2008 have just been released.
Education
• A Canadian educational expert has praised the Ministry of Education-funded Best Evidence Synthesis (BES) programme, which gathers evidence of what works in education from local and overseas studies, saying it is “the smartest intellectual property in the world”.
• On the other hand, a British education expert has criticised the NZ education system over its handling of children with learning disabilities and the fact that there is no screening system to pick up such problems.
Environment & sustainability:
• Communities and Local Government in the UK has released its first Sustainable Development Action Plan (SDAP) for 2007/2008.
• The first government in the world to introduce serious sustainability reporting measures is Sweden - all 55 state owned companies will have to file an annual sustainability report from 2009, using the Global Reporting Initiative Guidelines.
• An alternative approach to sustainability reporting is the Social Footprint Method from the Centre for Sustainable Innovation – a pilot with US ice cream company Ben and Jerry’s has recently been completed.
• A report from Britain’s Royal Society has stated that there is a need to avoid becoming locked into inefficient biofuel supply chains that potentially create harmful environmental and social impacts.
• Solar water heating is becoming increasingly popular in NZ, with a significant increase in installations towards the end of 2007.
• A recent national survey by BRANZ on heat pumps has shown that they are becoming the preferred way to both heat and cool NZ houses, although use during summer months could increase the annual cost of electricity to homeowners.
Health & wellbeing:
• A UK report on the government’s Supporting People programme that has just been released indicates that the government funding provided in the programme has produced double the financial benefits back in the community, through reduced costs in health services, tenancy failure, crime and residential care.
• A new study from Queensland has confirmed that using a sun-bed early in life, doubles the risk of developing melanoma.
Law & Government:
• Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnerships (RIEPs) in the UK are to receive £185m in funds to support councils to deliver better services and make 3 per cent efficiency savings over the next three years. RIEPs are local government-led partnerships that work to support better, more efficient local services.
• The UK Audit Commission published a report “Healthy competition” at the end of last year that considers the potential for councils to use competition and contestability to generate cost savings and service improvements.
People, culture & diversity:
• 2008 is the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue (EYID), which recognises that Europe’s great cultural diversity is a unique advantage. The Year will encourage an exploration of a rich cultural heritage and opportunities to learn from different cultural traditions.
• Social networking sites are predicted to increasingly become the target of high-tech criminals who will use them to gather information e.g. details about bank accounts, as in an attacks on the accounts of Brazilian users of the Google Orkut social networking site in 2007.
•Sociologists are now using social networking sites like Facebook to gather or mine data on relationships with the intention of tracking people long term for studies.
• According to a survey by a home equity release company and a website for 50+ NZers, 40% of seniors felt that they were financially worse off than 5 years ago.
• The Human Rights Commission has released the report from the Transgender Inquiry: “To be who I am”. A summary of the submissions is also available.
Science, technology & transport:
• The top 5 technologies that could become big in 2008 in the UK, according to the BBC are: the Web-to-go, ultra mobile PCs, IPTV, Wimax, and mobile VoIP, while Bill Gates is predicting that the keyboard and mouse will give way in the future to touch, vision and speech interfaces.
• The founder of Wikipedia has just launched an open source search engine, Wikia Search that will operate as a result of a community of users, in the same way that Wikipedia does. Wikia Search’s four guiding principles are transparency, community, quality and privacy.
• A Windows virus called Mebroot (named by Symantec), has affected about 5000 people in Europe – the virus waits until the user logs onto their online banking account and steals the bank login information. Mebroot is not detected by many commercial anti-virus packages.
• Even a small office or business can have some kind of impact on the environment, by better use of recycling and re-examining how the business handles its waste.
• A win-win situation is possible with work-life balance, according to a company that specialises in attitude research.
• A group of leading newspaper executives will gather to discuss their list of 66 current trends, that they see having a future impact on the newspaper industry.
• Hays, a specialist recruiting company have identified the top 10 trends it believes will influence the recruitment market in 2008.
• The Reserve Bank’s first discussion papers for 2008 have just been released.
Education
• A Canadian educational expert has praised the Ministry of Education-funded Best Evidence Synthesis (BES) programme, which gathers evidence of what works in education from local and overseas studies, saying it is “the smartest intellectual property in the world”.
• On the other hand, a British education expert has criticised the NZ education system over its handling of children with learning disabilities and the fact that there is no screening system to pick up such problems.
Environment & sustainability:
• Communities and Local Government in the UK has released its first Sustainable Development Action Plan (SDAP) for 2007/2008.
• The first government in the world to introduce serious sustainability reporting measures is Sweden - all 55 state owned companies will have to file an annual sustainability report from 2009, using the Global Reporting Initiative Guidelines.
• An alternative approach to sustainability reporting is the Social Footprint Method from the Centre for Sustainable Innovation – a pilot with US ice cream company Ben and Jerry’s has recently been completed.
• A report from Britain’s Royal Society has stated that there is a need to avoid becoming locked into inefficient biofuel supply chains that potentially create harmful environmental and social impacts.
• Solar water heating is becoming increasingly popular in NZ, with a significant increase in installations towards the end of 2007.
• A recent national survey by BRANZ on heat pumps has shown that they are becoming the preferred way to both heat and cool NZ houses, although use during summer months could increase the annual cost of electricity to homeowners.
Health & wellbeing:
• A UK report on the government’s Supporting People programme that has just been released indicates that the government funding provided in the programme has produced double the financial benefits back in the community, through reduced costs in health services, tenancy failure, crime and residential care.
• A new study from Queensland has confirmed that using a sun-bed early in life, doubles the risk of developing melanoma.
Law & Government:
• Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnerships (RIEPs) in the UK are to receive £185m in funds to support councils to deliver better services and make 3 per cent efficiency savings over the next three years. RIEPs are local government-led partnerships that work to support better, more efficient local services.
• The UK Audit Commission published a report “Healthy competition” at the end of last year that considers the potential for councils to use competition and contestability to generate cost savings and service improvements.
People, culture & diversity:
• 2008 is the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue (EYID), which recognises that Europe’s great cultural diversity is a unique advantage. The Year will encourage an exploration of a rich cultural heritage and opportunities to learn from different cultural traditions.
• Social networking sites are predicted to increasingly become the target of high-tech criminals who will use them to gather information e.g. details about bank accounts, as in an attacks on the accounts of Brazilian users of the Google Orkut social networking site in 2007.
•Sociologists are now using social networking sites like Facebook to gather or mine data on relationships with the intention of tracking people long term for studies.
• According to a survey by a home equity release company and a website for 50+ NZers, 40% of seniors felt that they were financially worse off than 5 years ago.
• The Human Rights Commission has released the report from the Transgender Inquiry: “To be who I am”. A summary of the submissions is also available.
Science, technology & transport:
• The top 5 technologies that could become big in 2008 in the UK, according to the BBC are: the Web-to-go, ultra mobile PCs, IPTV, Wimax, and mobile VoIP, while Bill Gates is predicting that the keyboard and mouse will give way in the future to touch, vision and speech interfaces.
• The founder of Wikipedia has just launched an open source search engine, Wikia Search that will operate as a result of a community of users, in the same way that Wikipedia does. Wikia Search’s four guiding principles are transparency, community, quality and privacy.
• A Windows virus called Mebroot (named by Symantec), has affected about 5000 people in Europe – the virus waits until the user logs onto their online banking account and steals the bank login information. Mebroot is not detected by many commercial anti-virus packages.
Friday, 11 January 2008
From the LOGIS news alert subscriptions (ending 11/01):
Welcome back everyone, to another year of ever-increasing information. As usual, if there are any areas that you think these posts should be covering, please let me know. A short post this week, as we all ease back into our regular routines after our breaks......
Business & management:
• Schools and councils in the UK are predicted to be facing over GBP2 billion in wage discrimination claims against them from women, where the law allows for 6 years of back pay to be claimed. There is the added complication of also needing to pay to protect the salaries of the estimated 20% of men working for councils, who have been “overpaid” in the past in relation to their female colleagues.
•The AC Nielsen Global Online Confidence Index shows that although NZ has slipped a little in the last part of 2007, consumers in NZ are confident enough in the local economy to ensure that NZ remains within the top 10 countries globally. (At the time of posting, the report for the 1st part of 2007 is still the report available on the Nielsen site.)
Environment & sustainability:
• Many people have noticed as part of NZ’s real estate boom, a trend towards building bigger houses (5, 6, 7 bedrooms or more). The Urban Land Institute (ULI) blog, “The Ground Floor” has a posting that looks at the phenomenon in the US where these houses are called “McMansions”.
Health & wellbeing:
• The Mental Health Foundation wants employers to take stress at work more seriously, and to make their workplaces more mentally healthy.
•The University of Otago report “Potential Health Impacts Associated with Mould in Leaky Buildings” is now available from the Local Government NZ website.
Law & Government:
• The Auckland Regional Council Annual Report for 2007 is now available online.
People, culture & diversity:
• From the Pew /Internet website: “Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency” is a report that provides information on the level of concern (or not!) amongst Americans online, about how much information about themselves may be available – i.e. their “online presence”. The site regularly presents reports from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, “that explore the impact of the Internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life.”
• ”Super-diversity” or “ethnic plurality” are set to become the future for a number of UK cities, as their populations become so diverse that no one ethnic group makes up a majority of the population. Coincidentally, a new book by Charles Landry and Phil Wood has just been published: “The intercultural city”, and has just arrived in LOGIS.
•Proposals have been made to change the law in the UK, to make it illegal to pay for sex, in an attempt to reduce the amount of human trafficking in the sex industry. Opinions are divided over whether the proposed law will work – some point to the lack of reduction in human trafficking in Sweden after the introduction of a similar law there in 1999, while the English Collective of Prostitutes is recommending that the government look at legalising brothels as in the NZ reformed law.
•The report: “Improving Work/Life Balance for DPB Beneficiary Sole Parent Families” that was supposed to be released by the Family Commission, is available online - a full copy can be found on the Greens website.
Science, technology & transport:
• There are often concerns about private entities being involved in public infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges, etc. Also from the ULI blog “The Ground Floor”, comes a discussion of some misconceptions about who gains what from such ventures.
• A UK report released by the National Consumer Council’s “Consumer futures” project, has shown that elderly and poor consumers are being left behind by the increasing moves towards electronic or digital commerce, e.g. in the banking and retail industries. There is a growing gap between those comfortable with the new technology and those who either can't cope with it, or can't afford to use it.
Business & management:
• Schools and councils in the UK are predicted to be facing over GBP2 billion in wage discrimination claims against them from women, where the law allows for 6 years of back pay to be claimed. There is the added complication of also needing to pay to protect the salaries of the estimated 20% of men working for councils, who have been “overpaid” in the past in relation to their female colleagues.
•The AC Nielsen Global Online Confidence Index shows that although NZ has slipped a little in the last part of 2007, consumers in NZ are confident enough in the local economy to ensure that NZ remains within the top 10 countries globally. (At the time of posting, the report for the 1st part of 2007 is still the report available on the Nielsen site.)
Environment & sustainability:
• Many people have noticed as part of NZ’s real estate boom, a trend towards building bigger houses (5, 6, 7 bedrooms or more). The Urban Land Institute (ULI) blog, “The Ground Floor” has a posting that looks at the phenomenon in the US where these houses are called “McMansions”.
Health & wellbeing:
• The Mental Health Foundation wants employers to take stress at work more seriously, and to make their workplaces more mentally healthy.
•The University of Otago report “Potential Health Impacts Associated with Mould in Leaky Buildings” is now available from the Local Government NZ website.
Law & Government:
• The Auckland Regional Council Annual Report for 2007 is now available online.
People, culture & diversity:
• From the Pew /Internet website: “Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency” is a report that provides information on the level of concern (or not!) amongst Americans online, about how much information about themselves may be available – i.e. their “online presence”. The site regularly presents reports from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, “that explore the impact of the Internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life.”
• ”Super-diversity” or “ethnic plurality” are set to become the future for a number of UK cities, as their populations become so diverse that no one ethnic group makes up a majority of the population. Coincidentally, a new book by Charles Landry and Phil Wood has just been published: “The intercultural city”, and has just arrived in LOGIS.
•Proposals have been made to change the law in the UK, to make it illegal to pay for sex, in an attempt to reduce the amount of human trafficking in the sex industry. Opinions are divided over whether the proposed law will work – some point to the lack of reduction in human trafficking in Sweden after the introduction of a similar law there in 1999, while the English Collective of Prostitutes is recommending that the government look at legalising brothels as in the NZ reformed law.
•The report: “Improving Work/Life Balance for DPB Beneficiary Sole Parent Families” that was supposed to be released by the Family Commission, is available online - a full copy can be found on the Greens website.
Science, technology & transport:
• There are often concerns about private entities being involved in public infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges, etc. Also from the ULI blog “The Ground Floor”, comes a discussion of some misconceptions about who gains what from such ventures.
• A UK report released by the National Consumer Council’s “Consumer futures” project, has shown that elderly and poor consumers are being left behind by the increasing moves towards electronic or digital commerce, e.g. in the banking and retail industries. There is a growing gap between those comfortable with the new technology and those who either can't cope with it, or can't afford to use it.
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