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"City governments, faced with decreased resources after the Great Recession and rising citizen demand for services with increased urbanization, must be able to make better decisions that are informed by data. To put it another way, in 2012, mayors need to start playing Moneyball in government with evidence-based analysis. From public health to education to energy policy, if governments can shift resources to where they're needed more quickly and accurately, there's substantial positive outcomes for citizens from the application of data for public good. Predictive data analytics - like any data analysis - can only be as effective as the data that they're based upon. Data quality is a long-term concern for any policy maker that wishes to make data-driven decisions, from foreign policy to energy to transportation. If it's bad data, policymakers are going to have a problem, even with superior methodology and algorithms."

Comment le numérique transforme nos cerveaux ? Nos enfants ces mutants est le titre d'un passionnant dossier du Nouvel Observateur (version papier) du 25 octobre 2012. La journaliste Sophie des Déserts montre comment les enfants d'aujourd'hui qui passent pour une grande part, une partie de leur vie devant un écran a un impact sur la manière d'apprendre, de comprend le monde… Une révolution numérique qui est en train de façonner une autre jeunesse « peut-être même une autre humanité ».

"Today the UK government published its Digital Government Strategy, a vision for how it will deliver government services online. Why, you may ask, should anyone care? It is a good question. Governments have been talking about how they will deliver services online for over two decades. (Anyone up for some e-government?) The sad truth is, at the national level, few users of online government services believe governments have succeeded - most citizens' experience with government websites are marked with frustration, a sense of loathing, and pretty much the opposite of whatever we imagined e-government would be."

"Since 2010 about 10 percent of American adults with mobile phones have had some kind of app on their phone that helps them track or manage their health, according to Pew's survey. While the figure presented in Pew's reports has ticked up or down one percentage point this year and last year, it's within the survey's margin of error."

GOOD BASIC DATA FOR  EVERYONE - A DRIVER FOR GROWTH AND EFFICIENCY. THE DANISH GOVERNMENT / LOCAL GOVERNMENT DENMARK OCTOBER 2012.

Les technologies de la communication, loin de se résumer à une révolution technique, induisent désormais une révolution sociale en redéfinissant les contours de la socialisation."

"Augmented Reality (AR) has grown in popularity over the last twelve months. Thanks to more and more people owning smartphones and startups like Blipper launching more sophisticated campaigns as a result. There have been a number of campaigns, ideas and projects that have been realised thanks to this new technology. We look at ten of the best from this year."

""Révolution numérique". C'est l'expression consacrée des verbiages politiciens, mais concrètement ça veut dire quoi ? Laurent Chemla raconte en une allégorie le chamboulement Internet. "

JEU - Le studio français Lexis Numérique lance ce lundi une fiction entre jeu vidéo, feuilleton romanesque et Web-série... L'avenir des Web-séries se joue peut-être ici. Avec l'expérience «Alt-Minds» lancée ce lundi en Europe dans quatre langues, ses participants vont être plongés «en temps réel» pendant huit semaines dans un thriller interactif. Une tentative de «fiction totale», selon les termes d'Eric Viennot, qui a développé ce projet avec son studio français Lexis Numérique.

This year, the Stratford Institute has prepared a  detailed evaluation of provincial and territorial  eGovernment initiatives (provision of online  services, online information and online citizen  engagement). The methodology was developed  in collaboration with Brainmaven Research from  other recent assessments internationally, tested  with a trial run last year and then reviewed and  modified with input from the provincial CIOs. The  intent is not to stress the relative ratings of the  jurisdictions but to identify and feature the best  practices emerging across our governments. This  is only a portrait of what our researchers saw at  one point in time this year. Websites constantly  evolve and some jurisdictions are embarking on  significant changes. Our intent is to encourage and  inspire advances, not so much amongst the CIOs,  who are well aware of the potential, but amongst  the departments and ministries which must adjust  their processes to accommodate escalating online  demand 

The European Commission is preparing a review of the present Broadband Guidelines by September 2012. This early revision reflects the fact that at the time of passing the Guidelines there was only limited experience at the European Commission regarding State aid notifications dealing with NGA networks. Moreover the revision has to take into account a number of specific questions related to technology which came up with the decision making in the context of public funding of NGA networks. The core objective of the present study is to support the revision process by drawing lessons from the implementation of past decisions and by clarifying a given set of technological issues.  Against this background the purpose of the study is twofold.   According to the Terms of Reference the study should   * assess the functioning of the existing framework by assessing the implementation of a selected sample of projects in the broadband sector. Such projects should include both European and non-European ventures, when the latter can provide useful insights due to their possible more advanced stage of implementation. The assessment should focus on an analysis of the potential difficulties experienced with the implementation of the conditions set out in the European Commission authorisation decision as well as on potential implications for the review of the Broadband Guidelines.  * give advice to the European Commission services regarding a limited number of technical issues which are relevant for the implementation of the Broadband Guidelines. The main issues to be addressed are:   (a) Technological solutions for NGA networks;   (b) Granting wholesale access to competitors on the subsidized networks  and different "open access" products;   (c) Separation.   The two objectives of the study are intertwined, and at the end lead to consistent recommendations for the upcoming revision of the Broadband Guidelines.

Governments around the world are investing multiple billions to support the roll-out of fiber to enable high speed broadband. These subsidies are based on the premise that fiber to the home (FTTH) brings substantial externalities. It is argued that FTTH will support economic growth and is key to national competitiveness; that it will benefit education, healthcare, transportation and the electricity industry; and that it will be the TV platform of the future. In this paper we argue that the evidence to support these views is surprisingly weak, and that there are several errors that are made repeatedly when making the case for FTTH. In particular: * The evidence that basic broadband contributed to economic growth is decidedly mixed, and some of the studies reporting greater benefits have significant flaws * Time and again, data that basic broadband brings certain benefits is used to justify investment in fiber - but the investment in fiber must be based on the incremental benefits of higher speed, since (in the developed world) there is already near universal basic broadband * This error is compounded since other high speed broadband infrastructures (such as cable, and in time wireless) are often simply ignored when making the case for fiber * Fibre is credited with bringing benefits that would in fact require major systems and social change in other parts of the economy, such as a widespread shift to home working, or remote medical care. In practice, these changes may never happen, and even if they do they will have significant additional cost beyond simply rolling out fibre * Frequently business or government applications, such as remote medical imaging, are used to make the case for FTTH. But these applications require fiber to certain major buildings, not to entire residential neighborhoods (and these buildings often have high speed connections already) We do not argue that there is no commercial case for rolling out fiber, nor do we argue that fiber b

This paper provides estimates of the economic value created by broadband Internet using measures of new gross domestic product and consumer surplus.  The study finds that the economic value created in  30OECD countries correlates roughly with the overall size of their broadband economies. In addition, price and quality data from the  United States suggest that widespread adoption of broadband Internet has occurred without a dramatic decline in prices, which reflects an unobserved increase in broadband quality that conventional government statistics do not capture.

Presentation for CITI State of Telecom 2011 Columbia University October 14, 2011 Erik Bohlin Division of Technology and Society  Department of Technology Management and Economics Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden The results reported here are based on a collaborative proj

"BT is investing £2.5bn to roll-out superfast broadband to two-thirds of UK consumer and business premises by the end of 2014. Regeneris Consulting was commissioned to assess the potential economic benefits of BT's investment in superfast broadband for businesses and focussed on four case study areas: A rural area in the UK: Norfolk and Suffolk A UK town: Caerphilly A UK city: Sunderland The capital city: London The report and its observations builds on Regeneris' experience in the production of number of studies assessing the economic impact of broadband investments throughout the UK. Their work has informed business planning and bid development, including a number of the current crop of BDUK projects and projects to help secure investment from European funding sources. The 'Key Facts regarding BT's investment in Broadband' and the 'Summary of key observations' from the report are below. "

Doubling the broadband speed for an economy increases GDP by 0.3%. Research conducted by Ericsson, Arthur D. Little and Chalmers University of Technology confirms that increased broadband speed contributes significantly to economic growth Positive effects come from automated and simplified processes, increased productivity as well as better access to basic services such as education and health

"The OECD Guide to Measuring the Information Society provides the statistical definitions, classifications and methods to measure and compare the information society across countries. It provides a standard reference for statisticians, analysts and policy-makers in the field. In particular, the guide should assist countries that want to start or develop new statistical programmes to measure the information society."

Dans le cadre d'un projet de l'UTC, Sami Ben Hassine et Fares Nabi ont développé un jeu en Flash. Voici une courte description : Cadrez-moi est un jeu pédagogique pour tous ceux souhaitent découvrir les principales règles d'esthétique en photographie. Dans un premier temps, une règle d'esthétique vous est présentée et dans un second temps, vous devez l'appliquer grâce à un viseur virtuel dans une scène pour laquelle on vous donne un objectif précis. Si votre score est bon, vous passez à la règle suivante !