Zeus trojan is back and targeting Windows Mobile phones

digitaltrends.com

A new variant of the Zeus trojan has surfaced and it's targeting Windows Mobile phones. In September a variant was discovered that targeted Symbian and BlackBerry phones.

Don't want to get all fire-and-brimstone about the trojan. The trojan is mostly interesting in that it is another warning about the kinds of security issues that smartphone users will be increasingly facing. But there isn't much direct risk of this particular trojan to users in the U.S. It is based on a phishing scam geared toward Polish users of accounts hosted by ING Bank Slaski accessed via the bank's two-factor authentication.

It's a man-in-the middle attack. The trojan, dubbed Zeus in the Mobile, is itself a variant of a trojan for Windows (a file identified as Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.bbmf). Users are exposed to Zeus either by visiting an infected Web site, or by first being attacked on the PC. Once infected, users are asked to enter their cell phone number and smartphone model for a ‘certificate update,’" according to the Kaspersky Lab Expert blog.

The trojan wants to steal the "mTANs" or mobile transaction authentication numbers, which banks are using to strengthen security as more people want to do online banking via their phones. The banks sends a one-time password in a text message. A certificate is needed to login to online accounts. In the case of this trojan, once the user responds with the phished info, the black hats send the user an SMS message with a link to the malware geared for the phone's specific OS, Symbian, Blackberry and now Windows Mobile phones. After that, the malware secretly sends text messages with all mTANs to the bad guys, according to The Register.

So far, iPhones and Android don't seem to be affected. But Android has also been the subject of its own SMS trojan. In December, researchers discovered what they thought was the first one -- malware dubbed "Movie Player," masquerading as a media player and targeted at Russian users. And then there were more, for Android ... two more trojans were found that targeted Chinese users. Again these infect users who download apps from the Android Market. The second Android Trojan, was discovered earlier this month.

Company-owned app marketplaces (Google's, Microsoft's) do have restrictions in place to limit malware-infested apps, but the rate of application development seems to be outpacing the resources companies have dedicated to validate the apps. Mobile app developers are required to apply and become authenticated before they can submit their apps. But fake companies can get through. And if an application uses a certificate, the phone is more likely to think the certificate and application is legit, according to an article in Computerworld.

Security researchers will also be increasingly highlighting mobile malware as they look for reasons to validate the up-and-coming mobile security software market. Kaspersky, for instance, sells Kaspersky Mobile Security 9, which requires an annual subscription of $30 per phone to protect Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry, and Android phones.

While most employees won't be accessing corporate bank information on their phones, enterprises are wise to start looking at affordable, reasonable methods to secure their road warriors' smartphones, and to watch the ways that black hats are duping users. IT departments may also want to add a smartphone security user training/education/wiki to their 2011 protection plans, such as to be as wary of links in text messages as they are in e-mail messages.

-networkworld.com

Mud volcano Set to Erupt for Quarter-Century !

matanews.com : Lapindo Brantas Mud

A mud volcano that has displaced more than 13,000 Indonesian families will erupt for at least a quarter of century, emitting belches of flammable gas through a deepening lake of sludge, scientists reported on Thursday.

Underground pressure means the volcano "Lusi," in Sidoarjo, East Java, is likely to gush grey mud until 2037, when volumes will become negligible, according to their computer model.

But gas will continue to percolate through it for decades and possibly centuries to come.

"Our estimate is that it will take 26 years for the eruption to drop to a manageable level and for Lusi to turn into a slow bubbling volcano," said team leader Richard Davies, a professor of Earth sciences at Durham University, in northeast England.

Thirteen people were killed after Lusi erupted on May 29 2006.

Mud volcanoes can form in two different ways. New fractures in rock that caps mud deposits can open, allowing the mud to rise to the surface if it’s under pressure. Or, an earthquake can liquefy mud that then travels through pre-existing cracks to the surface. (NASA Images - wired.com)

At its height, the volcano gushed 40 Olympic-sized pools of mud each day, a rate that has now slowed to four per day, Davies said by phone.

Its lake of mud has now smothered 12 villages to a depth of up to 15 metres (nearly 50 feet) and forced around 42,000 people from their homes.

The computer simulation is based on data from two existing commercial gas wells in the same region and on seismic reflection data that gives a picture of Lusi's geological structure.

"In the middle of the lake, or the volcano, is a vent that is 50 metres (164 feet) wide but there are 166 other vents that have popped up over the last four-plus years," said Davies.

"These have popped up in factories, in roads, in people's houses. Some of them have ignited, there have been examples of people being hurt by flames that have been formed due to the ignition."

Lusi's staying power means it will be a long-term but gradually less dramatic menace, he warned.

"You can't return to the area. In fact, ultimately, probably the impact of the volcano will increase," Davies declared.

"I think we've seen the most dramatic destruction. But it's not the end of the story. These vents are still forming."

The area is also slowly subsiding, and by 2037 could have formed a depression 95-475 metres (312-1558 feet) deep.

The Indonesian government blames the eruption on an earthquake that struck days before, about 280 kilometres (174 miles) away from Lusi.

But foreign experts accuse a gas drilling company, Lapindo Brantas, of failing to place a protective casing around a section of its well.
As a result, the well hole was exposed to a "kick" from pressurised water and gas that lie beneath the layer of mud, thus driving the grey, concrete-like fluid to the surface.

The study is released in the London-based Journal of the Geological Society.

A new analysis shows that a deadly mud volcano in Indonesia may not have been a natural disaster after all. The research lends weight to the controversial theory that the volcano was caused by humans.

AP Photo/Trisnadi

Villagers near Sidoarjo noticed a mud volcano beginning to erupt at 5 a.m. local time May 29, 2006. It was about 500 feet from a local gas-exploration well. Every day since then, the Lusi mud volcano has pumped out 100,000 tons of mud, or enough to fill 60 Olympic-size swimming pools. It has now covered an area of almost 3 square miles to a depth of 65 feet. Thirty thousand people have been displaced, and scientific evidence is mounting that the company drilling the well caused the volcano.

“The disaster was caused by pulling the drill string and drill bit out of the hole while the hole was unstable,” said Richard Davies, director of the Durham Energy Institute and co-author of a new paper in the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology, in a press release. “This triggered a very large ‘kick’ in the well, where there is a large influx of water and gas from surrounding rock formations that could not be controlled.”

Mud volcanoes can form in two different ways. New fractures in rock that caps mud deposits can open, allowing the mud to rise to the surface if it’s under pressure. Or, an earthquake can liquefy mud that then travels through pre-existing cracks to the surface.

Davies argues that the “kick” fractured the rock in the area, opening up new pathways for pressurized mud to come flowing up to the surface. Davies’ team’s research uncovered new evidence from a drilling log that the drilling company, Lapindo Brantas, pumped drilling mud down their well to try to stop the mud volcano.

“This was partially successful, and the eruption of the mud volcano slowed down,” Davies said. “The fact that the eruption slowed provides the first conclusive evidence that the bore hole was connected to the volcano at the time of eruption.”

The new paper came in response to a paper published by the company’s lead driller in the same journal. Lapindo Brantas has long maintained that drilling did not cause the eruption. Instead, the company claims an earthquake that occurred two days before and about 175 miles away did the damage. Obviously, there are financial ramifications if the drilling company is found liable for the disaster.

• The problem with the earthquake hypothesis is the stress changes caused by the quake would have been relatively small, too small to cause the volcano, said Davies’ co-author, University of California at Berkeley geologist Michael Manga.

• “There is 1,000 times not enough energy to cause the eruption,” Manga said. He was drawn into the controversy when the drilling company cited one of his papers on how earthquakes can cause mud volcanoes and have on 32 occasions. But Manga noted that based on all the historical examples that scientists have, what the company claimed happened was impossible.

“So I wrote a one-page paper [in 2007] saying it could not possibly have caused the mud volcano,” he said.
Other scientists came to similar conclusions, although some doubts remained.

An even stronger piece of evidence that the earthquake could not have created the mud volcano, Manga said, is that in the years before the quake, there were “bigger and closer earthquakes that did not cause an eruption.”

In fact, the stress changes associated with the tides are larger than the stresses caused by the earthquake that happened to strike two days before the mud volcano eruption began.
Still, the editor of the journal in which both the company’s paper and the Manga-Davies rebuttal was published said that it was possible that the same data could be subject to multiple interpretations.

“In geology, sometimes it’s not about being right or wrong, it’s about being reasonable or unreasonable,” said editor Octavian Catuneanu, geologist at the University of Alberta. “The funny thing is that sometimes datasets can be interpreted by different people in different ways, and this leads to arguments and controversies.”

Still, there is a large financial incentive for Lapindo Barantas’ scientists to find that their company was not responsible. “The drilling company cannot say anything different, right?” Manga said.

But Catuneanu said that no matter who the scientists were working for, they still had to meet the scientific standards of the journal.

“I guess there would be some bias there, but as a journal editor, what I need to make sure is that the authors of an article stick to the science,” he said. “If they want to have something publishable, they have to bring data and discuss it in a scientific manner.”

Lapindo Barantas could not be reached for comment.

-terradaily.com | www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/mudvolcano/

Upheaval Jolts Israel and Raises New Worry

A Palestinian near the border with Egypt last month at Rafah, in Gaza. New governments in the Arab world may increase support for the Palestinian cause.(www.nytimes.com)

The old certainties of the Middle East have been upended, and Israel finds many of its most reliable partners buffeted or blown away by popular agitation from below. Egypt was long one of Israel’s most important allies, and ties were quietly close to Tunisia. With demonstrations for change also in Jordan, Bahrain and Morocco, Israel finds itself floundering.

“Many of our assumptions are broken,” said Mark Heller, an analyst with the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “We are groping here, but with the limited tools we have to understand these phenomena, it is not very promising.”

• Israelis worry that Arab democracy movements will ultimately be dominated by extremists, as happened in Iran after the 1979 revolution that ousted the shah. They worry about the chaotic transition between revolt and democratic stability, if it ever comes. They see Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, even if it remains a minority of Egyptian opinion, as pressing for more solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood. And they fear that Israel’s regional partners in checking Iran are under threat or falling.

• Arab analysts counter that new Arab realities and democracies should be welcomed by Israel, because the new Arab generation shares many of the same values as Israel and the West. They argue that there is no support among Egypt’s leaders for the abrogation of the 1979 peace treaty, though it is unpopular with the public, and that the Egyptian Army will not disrupt foreign policy.

“There is no regime that is going to be against or hostile toward Israel in the near term,” said Mohamed Darif, a political scientist at Morocco’s King Hassan II University. “There has been an evolution in the Arab world, among political elites and in civil society. Israel is a fact.”

But new governments are more likely to increase their support for the Palestinian cause, with Egypt already reopening the crossing with Hamas-run Gaza. That new attitude could pressure Israel to do more to find a settlement, some analysts argue. Most others believe that Israel will instead resist, arguing that it cannot make concessions because it is now encircled by more hostile neighbors.

Middle East Turmoil - June 22, 1970
(coverbrowser.com)

“The widespread indignity felt by Egyptians who see themselves as the jailers of Gaza on behalf of Israel and Washington will give way to a realistic policy by which Egyptians use their ties with Israel to push the latter to adopt a more law-abiding stance towards the Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese,” Rami G. Khouri, an analyst at the American University of Beirut, wrote for YaleGlobal online. “Egypt will keep peace with Israel, but raise the temperature on issues of profound national concern to Arabs.”

The Israeli-Palestinian issue was not important to the democratic revolts, said Marwan Muasher, a former foreign minister of Jordan and its first ambassador to Israel. But he said it might well be in the future.

“Not solving the Israeli-Palestinian issue today will complicate relations between the emerging Arab governments and their peoples on one side and the West on the other,” said Mr. Muasher, now vice president of the Carnegie Endowment. “In this atmosphere of freedom, it will be very difficult for new Arab governments to ignore the occupation.”

Olivier Roy, a professor at the European University Institute in Italy, also expects a new Egyptian government to have “a more open policy toward the Palestinians, helping Gazans more through aid and transport.” But he argued that “it won’t go very far,” adding that many Israelis on the right prefer a Gaza dependent on Egypt, rather than on Iran.
While Israelis worry about the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Roy argued that the revolt surprised and sidelined the group. “The Brotherhood will be very happy to represent some sort of opposition,” he said. “They don’t want to be in the front line.

“So I don’t foresee a grand geostrategic change,” Mr. Roy said. “But the Saudis and Israelis are convinced there will be one.”

Other analysts see a major opportunity for Israel. “It’s a whole new software now being unfolded,” said Gilles Kepel, a scholar of Islam at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. “I believe there’s a big opening, and the ball is in the Israeli court.”

The Islamists in the region are splitting between the radicals and “the ‘participationists,’ whose role model is the governing party in Turkey,” Mr. Kepel said. “They will have to deal with democracy and see their ideological commitments erode.”

• But Israelis are anxious, especially about Jordan, where the king appears shaky, and about both the Muslim Brotherhood and left-wing secular voices in Egypt. The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, praised Egyptian democracy in an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times, but noted with concern that “the reformist leader Ayman Nour declared that ‘the era of Camp David is over.’ ”

• Israelis have also noted the emergence in Tahrir Square last week of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a leading Egyptian Islamic theologian who had been exiled by Mr. Mubarak, and the willingness of the Egyptian Army to let some Iranian warships through the Suez Canal.

• It’s not just the Israelis who are worried, noted Mr. Heller in Tel Aviv, pointing to the protest of Tunisian women over the weekend, concerned that their existing freedoms may be at risk in a new democracy from Islamists.

The main debate is whether Israel should “hunker down, seeing how unreliable our partners are,” or whether Israel should “take itself off the agenda by making some progress on the Palestinian issue,” Mr. Heller said, which he described as the harder sell. “Of course in Washington the debate is much the same.”

Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and former aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that Arab democracy could make Israel more secure.

“For years, Arab leaders who thought they had legitimacy problems because they were not elected played several chords to the populace — Arab unity, Islamic solidarity, and most important, the struggle against Israel,” he said. “So if you have regimes legitimized by democratic elections and accountable governance, then they will depend less on the conflict for their own internal standing.”

Even so, “the transition to democracy is full of all kinds of land mines,” Mr. Gold said, arguing that the regional destabilization had helped Iran, which Israel regards as its most important threat.

Iran itself, of course, has been struggling with its own domestic dissent, but Israeli analysts do not see the government as currently vulnerable.

Israelis worry that their country will be encircled by Islamists supported by Iran — Hezbollah to the north, Hamas to the south and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — and that new security problems will result from a breakdown of intelligence sharing with Egypt and increased smuggling of people, weapons, money and goods across the Sinai.

Many analysts see a growing role for Turkey, a Muslim democracy with a strong army and ties to the United States, Israel and the West. “Turkey will be a great beneficiary of Arab democratization, as more open, dynamic Arab societies learn from Turkey’s great leap forward” and its “soft and tantalizing brand of Islamo-secularism,” Mr. Khouri wrote.

The Turkish model would be a good outcome for Israel, many Israelis agree. But as they also noted, relations with Turkey have been deeply strained by its new closeness to Muslim neighbors like Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

-nytimes.com

Arab Unrest Propels Iran as Saudi Influence Declines

bizmology.com : Trouble in the Middle East means trouble for the oil markets

The popular revolts shaking the Arab world have begun to shift the balance of power in the region, bolstering Iran’s position while weakening and unnerving its rival, Saudi Arabia, regional experts said.

While it is far too soon to write the final chapter on the uprisings’ impact, Iran has already benefited from the ouster or undermining of Arab leaders who were its strong adversaries and has begun to project its growing influence, the analysts said. This week Iran sent two warships through the Suez Canal for the first time since its revolution in 1979, and Egypt’s new military leaders allowed them to pass.

Saudi Arabia, an American ally and a Sunni nation that jousts with Shiite Iran for regional influence, has been shaken. King Abdullah on Wednesday signaled his concern by announcing a $10 billion increase in welfare spending to help young people marry, buy homes and open businesses, a gesture seen as trying to head off the kind of unrest that fueled protests around the region.

King Abdullah then met with the king of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, to discuss ways to contain the political uprising by the Shiite majority there. The Sunni leaders in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain accuse their Shiite populations of loyalty to Iran, a charge rejected by Shiites who say it is intended to stoke sectarian tensions and justify opposition to democracy.

The uprisings are driven by domestic concerns. But they have already shredded a regional paradigm in which a trio of states aligned with the West supported engaging Israel and containing Israel’s enemies, including Hamas and Hezbollah, experts said. The pro-engagement camp of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia is now in tatters. Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has been forced to resign, King Abdullah of Jordan is struggling to control discontent in his kingdom and Saudi Arabia has been left alone to face a rising challenge to its regional role.

“I think the Saudis are worried that they’re encircled — Iraq, Syria, Lebanon; Yemen is unstable; Bahrain is very uncertain,” said Alireza Nader, an expert in international affairs with the RAND Corporation. “They worry that the region is ripe for Iranian exploitation. Iran has shown that it is very capable of taking advantage of regional instability.”

“Iran is the big winner here,” said a regional adviser to the United States government who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

Iran’s circumstances could change, experts cautioned, if it overplayed its hand or if popular Arab movements came to resent Iranian interference in the region. And it is by no means assured that pro-Iranian groups would dominate politics in Egypt, Tunisia or elsewhere.

For now, Iran and Syria are emboldened. Qatar and Oman are tilting toward Iran, and Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Yemen are in play.

“If these ‘pro-American’ Arab political orders currently being challenged by significant protest movements become at all more representative of their populations, they will for sure become less enthusiastic about strategic cooperation with the United States,” Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, former National Security Council staff members, wrote in an e-mail.

They added that at the moment, Iran’s leaders saw that “the regional balance is shifting, in potentially decisive ways, against their American adversary and in favor of the Islamic Republic.” Iran’s standing is stronger in spite of its challenges at home, with a troubled economy, high unemployment and a determined political opposition.

The United States may also face challenges in pressing its case against Iran’s nuclear programs, some experts asserted.

“Recent events have also taken the focus away from Iran’s nuclear program and may make regional and international consensus on sanctions even harder to achieve,” Mr. Nader said. Iran’s growing confidence is based on a gradual realignment that began with the aftershocks of the Sept. 11 attacks. By ousting the Taliban in Afghanistan, and then Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the United States removed two of Iran’s regional enemies who worked to contain its ambitions. Today, Iran is a major player in both nations, an unintended consequence.

Iran demonstrated its emboldened attitude this year in Lebanon when its ally, Hezbollah, forced the collapse of the pro-Western government of Saad Hariri. Mr. Hariri was replaced with a prime minister backed by Hezbollah, a bold move that analysts say was undertaken with Iran’s support.

“Iraq and Lebanon are now in Iran’s sphere of influence with groups that have been supported by the hard-liners for decades,” said Muhammad Sahimi, an Iran expert in Los Angeles who frequently writes about Iranian politics. “Iran is a major player in Afghanistan. Any regime that eventually emerges in Egypt will not be as hostile to Hamas as Mubarak was, and Hamas has been supported by Iran. That may help Iran to increase its influence there even more.”

Iran could also benefit from the growing assertiveness of Shiites in general. Shiism is hardly monolithic, and Iran does not speak on behalf of all Shiites. But members of that sect are linked by faith and by their strong sense that they have been victims of discrimination by the Sunni majority. Events in Bahrain illustrate that connection well.

Bahrain has about 500,000 citizens, 70 percent of them Shiite. The nation has been ruled by a Sunni family since it was captured from the Persians in the 18th century. The Shiites have long argued that they are discriminated against in work, education and politics. Last week, they began a public uprising calling for democracy, which would bring them power. The government at first used lethal force to try to stop the opposition, killing seven. It is now calling for a dialogue while the protesters, turning out in huge numbers, are demanding the government’s resignation.

But demonstrators have maintained their loyalty to Bahrain. The head of the largest Shiite party, Al Wefaq, said that the party rejected Iran’s type of Islamic government. On Tuesday, a leading member of the party, Khalil Ebrahim al-Marzooq, said he was afraid that the king was trying to transform the political dispute into a sectarian one. He said there were rumors the king would open the border with Saudi Arabia and let Sunni extremists into the country to attack the demonstrators.

“The moment that any border opens by the government, means the other borders will open,” he said. “You don’t expect people will see their similar sect being killed and not interfere. We will not call them.”

But, he said, they will come.

-nytimes.com

Oil Surges to $119 on Libya Crisis; Goldman Sees ‘Upside Risk’

Oil climbed to the highest in 30 months in London as Libya’s violent uprising reduced supplies from Africa’s third-biggest producer.

heraldsun.com.au : A Libyan man protests against Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

Brent rose above $119 a barrel on estimates the revolt caused Libya to lose as much as two-thirds of its oil output. Futures in New York gained for a sixth day, after climbing above $100 a barrel. The cuts create “significant upside risk” to prices and any further disruptions could create severe shortages in global oil markets, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said.

“When geopolitics in the Middle East are at play in the oil markets, all conventional bets on the direction of oil prices based on supply and demand fundamentals are off,” said Harry Tchilinguirian, head of commodity-markets strategy at BNP Paribas SA in London.

Brent oil for April settlement rose as much as $8.54, or 7.7 percent, to $119.79 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange, the highest since Aug. 21, 2008. The contract traded at $115.15 at 1:13 p.m. London time. It has rallied 12 percent this week.

Crude for April delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange gained as much as $5.31, or 5.4 percent, to $103.41 a barrel in electronic trading. Yesterday, it added $2.68 at $98.10, the highest settlement since Oct. 1, 2008.

Libya, which pumps 1.6 million barrels a day of oil, is the ninth-largest producer among the 12 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, shipping most of its crude and fuels across the Mediterranean to Europe. The country has the largest reserves in Africa.

Output Halt

As much as 1 million barrels of Libya’s daily oil production may have been shut, Barclays Capital said in a report yesterday. Goldman Sachs estimated disruptions at 500,000 barrels a day. Total SA and OMV AG became the latest energy producers to scale back operations, following Eni SpA, RWE AG and BASF SE’s Wintershall unit. China National Petroleum Corp. said it relocated 47 of its Libyan-based workforce.

New York futures retreated from an intraday high of $100 a barrel yesterday after Saudi Arabia and other countries said they won’t wait for an emergency meeting of OPEC to increase output, according to a person with knowledge of producer-nation policy. Any extra supply would be conditional on requests for more crude, the person said.

“One reason we haven’t seen a far more aggressive rally is because from an OPEC spare capacity perspective they are far healthier now,” Soozhana Choi, head of Asian commodities research at Deutsche Bank AG in Singapore, told Rishaad Salamat on Bloomberg Television’s “On the Move.” “Beyond spare capacity, if you look at commercial inventories, they are quite healthy as well.”
U.S. Inventories

Gasoline prices advanced to their highest since September 2008. Contracts of the fuel for March settlement on the Nymex gained as much as 14.1 cents to $2.8560 a gallon. The motor fuel also reached similar highs in Europe to trade at $980 a ton.

Crude stockpiles in the U.S., the world’s largest oil user, climbed 163,000 barrels last week, the industry-funded American Petroleum Institute said yesterday. An Energy Department report today may show supplies increased 1.1 million barrels in the seven days ended Feb. 18 from 345.9 million, according to the median estimate of 15 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Libya is the latest nation to be rocked by protests ignited by the ouster of Tunisia’s president last month and fanned by the Feb. 11 fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Disturbances have spread to Iran, Bahrain, Yemen and Algeria.

Unrest in Bahrain, which is linked to Saudi Arabia by a 26- kilometer (16-mile) causeway, has in the past spread across the border. In 1995, the Saudi government arrested a large number of Shiite Muslims on suspicion of involvement in protests taking place in Bahrain, said New York-based Human Rights Watch.

$220 Oil

Prices may surge to $220 a barrel if more production is halted in Libya and Algeria, analysts at Nomura Holdings Inc., led by Michael Lo in Hong Kong, said yesterday in a note. Algeria is also an OPEC member.

“There is room for spikes, possibly to $175,” Carl Larry, president of Oil Outlooks & Opinions LLC in Houston, told Susan Li on Bloomberg Television’s “First Up.” “Something like that would have to take an extreme situation, more unrest in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Ben Sharples in Melbourne at bsharples@bloomberg.net; Grant Smith in London at gsmith52@bloomberg.net

-bloomberg.com

Asia next to deploy ePassports, says Entrust chief

Add caption

Asia is likely to follow the European Union in deploying extended access control (EAC) ePassports, which incorporate biometric and encryption technologies to improve data security, according to Entrust chief executive Bill Conner.

“The EAC ePassport has an RFID chip in it. In that chip, we use PKI certificate technology to not just digitally sign but to encrypt in certificate form passport information. It also includes biometrics”, Conner, whose company supplies the ePassport to the EU, told Infosecurity.

Conner said he expects Asian countries to follow the EU in adopting the EAC ePassport.

Working with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which sets global standards for electronic passports, Entrust has developed an EAC ePassport that will only provide information to a reader that has a certificate that is authorized to read that content, Conner said.

The technology enables a certificate “hand shake” between the ePassport and the reader. “The ePassport won’t release the data until it does a check on the PKI certificate on the mobile reader….When the hand shake is done, the agent will be able to see your picture, your biometric, and your personal data and check those against the database”, he said.

Entrust also worked with Interpol to develop a global ID card for Interpol officers designed to expedite the officers’ international travel in pursuit of criminals.

“The solutions developed by Entrust enable Interpol and other law enforcement agencies to work more freely, effectively and efficiently in protecting personnel, facilities and digital assets in the pursuit of transnational criminals”, commented Interpol Secretary-General Ronald K. Noble.

-infosecurity-us.com

Authentication of Identity for E-Government

An increasing range of government services are being provided over the Internet and some of these transactions will require a secure form of identity authentication. There are obvious risks to privacy if the government does not correctly identify the citizens with whom it is dealing.

Electronic identity authentication can take many forms and each involves some level of privacy risk. Towards one end of the spectrum there are technologically complex systems such as "smart" identity cards (perhaps incorporating biometrics) and public key technology, and towards the other end are less complex options involving user-names and passwords.

The options being presented for public consultation have avoided the complexity of some of the high-level authentication models and it is reassuring that no-one will be forced to register for the on-line service. However, having a choice whether to "opt-in" or not is only meaningful if other alternatives continue to exist in parallel with the on-line option. It is important that non-electronic methods of dealing with government agencies are retained.

Nor should the adoption of new electronic authentication be used to diminish citizens' opportunities to transact anonymously where appropriate. For example, someone might today pick up a leaflet from a government agency without identifying themselves. People should be able to anonymously download the equivalent leaflet online in the future without having to authenticate their identity. There is a risk of a great loss of privacy if the creation of ubiquitous electronic authentication systems mean that the State insists on verifying identity in a range of circumstances where citizens currently transact off-line on an anonymous basis or are taken at their word when they identify themselves.

Experience in other parts of the world has shown the need for caution in introducing authentication systems. Citizens are rightly concerned about the risks of national identity cards being introduced by stealth and the risks of misuse of their personal information by government. They are right to question how their privacy will be protected - both now and in the future.

I am taking a close interest in this project and have emphasised the need for a thorough analysis of the privacy issues. The government accepted back in April last year that a full assessment of the privacy risks associated with the proposal would be carried out. It is disappointing that the public is now being asked to judge the merits of the various options without the benefit of that assessment. The public needs to be assured in a transparent manner that the privacy risks have been properly addressed before any options are selected. A thorough and detailed privacy impact assessment is needed on the chosen option to ensure that people's privacy is guaranteed.

Privacy Commissioner, Bruce Slane |-privacy.org.nz

Rural India catches fancy of IT vendors

Indian villages are finding favor from a host of companies including business process outsourcing (BPO) and healthcare services providers, IT vendors and telcos, that have launched products and services tailor-made for the rural customer.

With 70 percent of the population living in villages, India's rural market is significant. Companies were skeptical about monetizing this market segment, due to the lower purchasing power of consumers. However, with the country's high economic growth, this market is witnessing income growth and now offers a plethora of opportunities for companies in the IT, ITES (IT-enabled services) and telecom industries.

Inclusive growth is increasingly viewed as a critical enabler for India's growth.

"Today, IT is being successfully implemented in diverse areas to narrow the rural-urban divide and bring about a positive change," Raju Bhatnagar, vice president of Nasscom, told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail.

This segment has for long been underserved but things are significantly different now. "Areas like education, financial services, e-government and healthcare hold a lot of promise," Kamlesh Bhatia, principal research analyst at Gartner, said in a phone interview. However, he noted that this is not a market that can generate huge revenues in the short-term. "Revenue generation will take place only in the medium- to long-term," Bhatia added.

The government, through its e-government initiatives, is emerging as a major driver for IT adoption. As part of its National E-Governance Plan project, the government has collaborated with IT companies to establish the National Information Infrastructure, where State-Wide Area Networks, Common Service Centers and State Data Centers are being established to provide connectivity and technology access throughout the country.

"These initiatives would open up rural India as a large, untapped market for IT solutions," Bhatnagar said.

According to Bhatia, so far, initiatives such as e-government have seen more significant impact in the rural markets. "What the rural population also needs are solutions in 'pull areas', such as mobile TV and other content-driven applications," he said.

Interestingly, most applications developed for the rural buyer are not pan-India in nature. "They are localized to suit the needs of a particular region," he added.

BPO for rural, ERP for agriculture

IT-BPO companies today are moving toward rural areas. "Banking and financial services as well as telecom are key growth drivers, as mobile penetration and mobile banking services increase in rural India, and companies are also able to leverage their local language capabilities," Bhatnagar said.

Rural BPO helps create job opportunities for the youth in rural and suburban areas, and provides an attractive alternative for the local population to work in their native areas--and remain closer to their families. This then discourages migration to cities.

In 2009, Infosys signed an agreement with the rural development department of the Andhra Pradesh government to set up 22 rural BPO centers in the state. HOV Services also partnered academia to offer a BPO module to final-year graduate students, while the Karnataka state's IT department committed US$88.2 million (INR 400 million) to start 100 rural BPO centers. Rural BPO companies such as HarVa have also stepped up to train women in various skills such as data entry and software testing.

ERP (enterprise resource planning) players are also reaching out to Indian villages. SAP Solutions, for instance, localized its products for agri-business to suit Indian agricultural conditions. "These solutions help organizations move from a de-centralized to a centralized model of working, with real-time access to information across the organization," said Atul Bhandari, vice president of value engineering and industries, SAP Indian subcontinent.

Agri-business organizations deploy SAP software to integrate their suppliers and customers and facilitate real-time sharing of information and decision-making. For example, Godrej Agrovet integrated and automated the process of procuring feed from farmers for their oil plantation business. Farmers are provided RFID cards that contain all critical farm produce-related information, helping in the analysis of farm productivity.

SAP's host of agri-business clients include Ruchi Soya, Godrej Agrovet, Amul, Mother Dairy and Adani Wilmar.

Hotbed for innovation

New products and services are also emerging in healthcare, education and finance.

Bhatnagar added: "The use of IT in telemedicine and remote diagnosis for rural areas is an area of emerging interest." For instance, a Kolkata-based hospital uses telemedicine to assist doctors in rural areas, where they can consult with their peers in a hospital--via voice and data connection. This allows patients to be treated by both a local doctor and hospital specialist.

Bhatnagar noted that, to date, about 10 million smartcards have been issued under the health insurance scheme for the poor. Under the scheme, the card is given to a family of five to cover hospitalization costs of up to US$661.5 (INR 30,000).

Similarly, financial services providers have also stepped up to address this market segment.

The Tripura Gramin Bank (TGB), for instance, opened several mobile bank branches to provide banking services in Indian villages. It issued biometric cards to disburse wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, as well as pension under the National Old-Age Pension Scheme (NOAP). The devices are equipped with a fingerprint verification system, allowing rural residents to withdraw their payment with a thumbprint impression on a touchscreen.

Tele-education is also making its way to the villages. For example, Comat Technologies offers supplemental education services through its rural business centers located in thousands of villages. The company also offers coaching for rural youth who aspire to pursue higher education, and has reached over 10,000 students, resulting in a marked reduction in the school dropout rates.

Niche applications for rural

The growth of India's rural market has spurred several applications, including:

• Tata Teleservices' Nano Ganesh is a mobile device which has enabled farmers in Gujarat to operate their irrigation pumps from distant locations, saving electricity, time, money and water. With its network support, rural distribution channel and handset, Tata also offers remote device access to regulate irrigation systems. 
• Nokia and Bharti Airtel joined hands to launch Ovi Life Tools, a service that provides Airtel's mobile customers with access to relevant content on agriculture, education and entertainment.
• Qualcomm developed a mobile app called Fisher Friend, which fishermen can use to access data on market prices, weather and emergency information in local languages.
• Hindustan Unilever's community portal "iShakti "promotes connectivity and communication in villages via Internet kiosks and delivers information pertaining to health, education, agriculture and other services to registered users.
• Hewlett-Packard introduced the Village Photographer Program, which has been piloted in Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh. It comprises a HP Digital camera, portable photo-printer and solar power-pack.
• Digital Green, a not-for-profit organization started at Microsoft Research India, uses digital video to train small and marginal farmers in India.
• Gram Vaani, a community media company, created an open-source to help millions in far-flung villages, without infrastructure or resources, to create a community radio station of their own. Seven stations are online today.

-zdnetasia.com

It Is Time to Pull the Plug on EU E-Government Benchmarking

Yesterday Capgemini published the latest version of its benchmarking of e-government services across the EU, continuing a tradition started by the European Commission several years ago.

I need to provide full disclosure here, for those who have not read my earlier positions on e-government benchmarking, be it EU, UN, or various consulting firms. I have always  questioned the value of these surveys and ranking, although I acknowledge their political importance that they play in giving an impulse to countries where investments have been lagging behind.

This year’s survey is incredibly rich in data and detail, and makes a valuable attempt at looking at e-government maturity at the local level as well as at looking in some considerable detail to the important area of e-procurement (guess why? the European Commission is funding a major pilot on e-procurement – see previous post).

Evolved from its early versions where the report was looking only at the online service sophistication, the benchmark now looks at multiple dimensions, such as transparency, multichannel delivery, user satisfaction, ease of use, as well as – at the portal level – how well the one-stop shop approach is implemented, its usability, and the user focus of its design.

I have no reason to believe that the quality of this survey is not good, on the contrary. It is road-tested, people engaged are skilled professionals in the area, and the data collection and analysis cannot but have become better.

Unfortunately the whole exercise is not convincing.

Imagine my surprise, as an Italian citizen, when I have seen that Italy has jumped up to almost number one in full online service availability. Luckily enough, when it comes to user experience, Italy trails behind in the benchmark. Of course the press and the blogosphere in Italy celebrates the former and sort of understates the latter.

Let me give you a flavor of personal experience here. My mother suffers from age-related cognitive impairment and is entitled to disability benefits. However one can file for disability benefits only online or through a number of franchisees, such as unions or associations, that usually charge for their services. A high touch service, where people with disabilities or their relatives could clearly benefit from human interaction, has been turned into an online service, which usually forces people to rely on intermediaries, given the affected demographics.

Another example, coming from my professional experience, is Spain, which made very well in last year’s benchmark, and focused almost relentlessly on bridging the gap with respect to online leaders. In meetings with Spanish officials last year, it was clear that they could hardly justify and sustain some of the online service that they develop, especially in consideration of the tough economic and financial challenges for the country.

This is the benchmarking effect: pushing jurisdictions in the wrong direction, by ignoring their peculiarities and making those who lag behind – often for good reasons – run an often useless race.

The effort of the EU benchmark at capturing new metrics is certainly good, but suggestions for the way forward are disappointing. Here are a few highlights:

Build the findings of the recently launched Action Learning Group (ALG) on “Open and Transparent Government” into the 2011 monitoring framework: This ALG is reviewing monitoring practices within countries to seek a common basis. It can also explore recent developments in ‘cloud’ provisioning, and other aspects of the rapidly advancing technology landscape to recommend pilot activities as well as more table EU27+ monitoring indicators

This looks like putting together two hyped themes – openness and cloud – to replace online services (which were the hype at the beginning). But what would be actually measured and why remains unclear.

Increase the link between these measurements and the current CIPs pilots: Considerable benefit will merge through this in efficiency, commonality of approaches, communication with countries, and monitoring. This will inform the development from these more generic ‘key enablers’ and potential specific ‘common horizontal building blocks’ that can be used within and across Europe. This may result in recommendations in such areas as emerging new trans‐EU ‘platforms’, ‘gov as an API’, new business models (e.g. involving other sectors). Another consideration is to tighten the link between this measurement approach and the DIGIT ISA programme: There is considerable synergy potential through doing so.

CIPs are large scale pilots in areas like procurement and identity management (see previous post), while ISA deals mostly with European interoperability issues. According to this suggestion, the benchmark would be subservient to EU initiatives, potentially focusing even less on individual country peculiarities than it did so far.

Explore possibilities of launching studies to compare practices in EU with practice in other non‐EU regions to both influence global developments, and learn from leading practice: This can build on existing international collaboration (e.g. group of 5: US, Canada, UK, NZ, Australia), and consider developments in major economies such as China, India etc.

It looks like the report does not recognize that there is a need to better analyze country peculiarities, but wants to move to an even more general level (and – by the way – isn’t there already a UN-sponsored e-government ranking?).

At the end, the report promises the following developments

1.Stabilising the 2010 scope of measurement – and provide a new broader set of benchmarks for countries (and regions) to compare and learn from;
2. Establishing Action Learning Groups (ALG) – a process for indicator innovation; piloting; and (leading) practice sharing. This is in process addressing: Open Government & Transparency, and Life‐Events;
3. Increasing reference to international leading practices – to ensure that Europe remains competitive on a worldwide stage

In a nutshell:

1. provide more metrics, 
2. paint this in open government (which is indeed very fashionable, I can’t wait to see a ranking by number of published open data set), and 
3. put this in a broader context.

I know there are plenty of great people and genuine efforts behind all this. But could we please pull the plug on EU benchmarking, and move on?

==============================
Andrea Di Maio is a vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research, where he focuses on the public sector, with particular reference to e-government strategies, Web 2.0, open government, cloud computing, the business value of IT, open-source software, green IT and the impact of technology on the future of government

-blogs.gartner.com

Ireland Ranked First in Europe for e-Government

Ireland has been placed first in a benchmarking exercise published in a European Commission report called “Digitising Public Services in Europe: Putting ambition into action”.

According to the report, the availability of government services across Europe has increased from 69 per cent to 82 per cent from 2009 to 2010.

The metrics for the report are especially significant for Ireland in a time of recession, as they focused on two essential public services: ‘finding a job’ and ‘starting a company’.

Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda said: "I am pleased that increasing numbers of EU citizens can now use online public services for major things like looking for a job, filing tax declarations or registering new companies. Member States who make basic public services fully available online can make life easier for their citizens and businesses, while reducing their own costs."

While focusing on job creation and support services, the report also looked at 20 other basic public services including car registration and tax returns. The best performers in the area of e-Government according to the report were Austria, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Sweden. The report commended these countries for having “the entire list of those basic services fully online.”

Looking at the specific services that are aimed at supporting entrepreneurs, the study examined the amount of red tape that was necessary to start a company.

The report found “that 55 per cent of services required to start up a company are provided either through a dedicated portal or automatically in Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Sweden and the UK. But only 46 per cent of useful services for the unemployed are currently delivered through a dedicated portal.”

The document also mentioned areas where the new Irish government could save money. It said that the area of e-procurement was, overall, not well established across Europe, although many countries are trying to improve this. It said, “if e-procurement were fully available, and more widely used, it could produce cost savings on public purchases as high as 30 per cent.”

In welcoming the report, outgoing Minister for Finance, Mr Brian Lenihan, said: “I am delighted with this outcome. It proves that the renewed focus by the

Government on e-Government since 2008 has yielded dividends in raising Ireland to the top of such an influential international benchmark.”

The Minister praised the efforts of staff across the public service who have worked diligently to achieve this result, highlighting that Ireland is now a leader in exploiting the digital economy.

The Minister said that the report is an opportunity for the next Irish government to further advance in this area by making public services leaner and more efficient.

The benchmark analyses 12 basic online services for citizens:

1. Income Taxes,
2. Job Search, 
3. Social Security Benefits,
4. Personal Documents, 
5. Car Registration, 
6. Applications for Building Permission,
7. Declarations to the Police, 
8. Public Libraries,
9. Birth and Marriage Certificates, 
10. Enrolment in Higher Education, 
11. Announcement of Moving,
12. Health-related Services,
    and 8 online public services for businesses:
    
    1. Social Contribution for Employees, 
    2. Corporate Tax, 
    3. VAT, 
    4. Registration of a New Company, 
    5. Submission of Data to the Statistical Office,
    6. Customs Declarations, 
    7. Environment-related Permits, and 
    8. Public Procurement.

-.theepochtimes.com

The Impact of Ignoring Change

Spencer Stern

I’m someone who works with social tools for a living. My job is defined by the level of expertise I bring to using them and the way I can use them to connect with people in communities of expertise, mostly in a business context. In a grand failure (or, is it?) of work-life balance, my social and personal life involves a good deal of social network use too.

I was recently working with a west-coast municipality supporting their Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) business case development process. The project was going quite well as all the ingredients for success were in place, including:

• Strong executive sponsorship, 
• A committed project manager, and
• A sound change management (CM) strategy led by a seasoned CM veteran.

During the course of the project the executive sponsor needed to step aside as other competing priorities were consuming her time. This was a critical moment for our project and we realized that a smooth transition would be needed. The project manager and I provided the executive sponsor a list of potential candidates we thought would be qualified replacements for her. Unfortunately, she selected someone who was not on our list, but was very loyal to her. Though the new executive sponsor was very competent, he was not very committed to change management.


One of the first steps the new sponsor did was to put in place his own team, including a new project manager. In addition, the change management lead was marginalized and was no longer invited to project team meetings. Though I counseled the new executive sponsor about the benefits of change management, he decided to plow forward with his own approach. That included utilizing me in an advisory role instead using me for providing hands-on tactical support. Unfortunately, the following issues arose:

• Managers and staff were unwilling to devote sufficient resources to the project because the executive sponsor and new project manager did not provide adequate direction about their new roles and did not continue utilizing the CM communications plan that had been developed 
• The uncertainty of the project team roles and the overall project direction led to the development of negative messages about the project that went unchecked by the project team
• Some project team members that remained on the team lost interest in their work because they were no longer receiving the positive feedback that the CM team fostered
• Valued employees voluntarily left the team because they felt disengaged
• Several leaders of the pilot departments shifted their priorities because they viewed the transition as an indication that the project was no longer mission critical - behavior that went unimpeded by the new project team

Surveys by two of the leading public sector trade associations, the Government Finance Officers Association (http://gfoa.org/) and the International City/County Management Association (http://icma.org/en/icma/home) confirmed the above problems. They found that in nearly all the cases where an enterprise-wide software deployment did not meet the specified objectives (budget, timetable, efficiencies, cost savings, etc.), it was related to issues managing the impact of change on the employee and the incumbent processes. Very rarely was technology the issue. If they could do the project again, the municipalities indicated that:


“A more intensive and planned change management approach always is at or near the top of the list.”


So back to the west coast client. What happened? They eventually selected a software vendor and are currently implementing. However they exceeded their initial budget and blew the timetable. In addition, they let the vendor drive the requirements, not the city employees. These factors led the executive sponsor to reconsider the impact of CM, and he got the CM lead re-engaged in the project. The lead is focused on educating the staff about the overall project plan and identifying the process efficiencies the CRM software could generate. The CM lead has helped re-energize the project team.



Let me close with the following questions:


1 - Does this situation sound familiar (been there, done that)?



2 - How would you have handled it differently?


spencer@sternconsultinginc.com

UK improves European e-government standings

E-services provision benchmark study identifies continued progress

The end-to-end electronic delivery of UK public services, from government procurement to citizen portals, has continued to improve, according to a European Commission study released today.

The ninth EC Benchmark Measurement on EU e-government (PDF) placed the UK ninth out of 32 EU countries surveyed in terms of "online sophistication". This measures the availability of information, one and two-way interaction, transactions and targeting or automation.

The UK improved its e-services online sophistication ranking to receive a rating of 100 per cent for business and 94 per cent for citizen services to be ranked seventh overall behind Ireland, Italy, Malta, Austria, Portugal and Sweden.

The UK's e-services also received a 100 per cent rating in terms of transparency of service delivery, multichannel service provision, privacy protection, ease of use and user satisfaction.

This is compared to the EU average of 82 per cent in 2010 and 69 per cent in 2009 in terms of the availability of 20 basic services, such as job searches and benefits guides.

Meanwhile, the sophistication rating of services stood at 90 per cent last year, amounting to a year-on-year increase of seven per cent.

In the field of e-procurement government services, the report found that many countries do not structurally monitor the benefits achieved, despite their increased need to realise savings from automated group buying capabilities.

Scotland was a notable exception, having reported audited savings of almost £800m over a four-year period.

The report also praised the national Buying Solutions e-procurement portal, but said that the UK's decentralised e-procurement strategy tends to mean maintaining multiple platforms at local, regional and national levels.

The EC called for greater transparency and consistency in the supplier selection process across EU nations to help increase the scope for competition throughout the region.

Most EU e-services are still delivered independently, meaning that citizens must visit separate services to administer different aspects of their personal or working lives.

The report's recommendations centred around "government as an application programming interface" to harness the potential for public agencies to enable private and third-sector players to develop e-service extensions, hosting citizen portals or developing specific software or apps, for example.

The data.gov.uk initiative was praised for its contribution to the UK's ability to personalise e-services beyond simple levels of general availability.

"We must bundle services so they are relevant to customers. In seeking out leading practices, it is important that EU nations look outside the region," said Graham Colclough, vice president for the global public sector at Capgemini.

"As globalisation continues, Europe's competitiveness will depend on governments' abilities to deliver effective services in an international context."

The study was carried out by Capgemini, Rand Europe, IDC and the Danish Technological Institute.

-v3.co.uk

More EU citizens benefitting from online public services

Brussels. More people across the EU now have access to public services online, according to Europe's 9th e-Government Benchmark Report released today, the EC press service announced.

The average availability of online public services in the EU went up from 69% to 82% from 2009 to 2010. Putting more Government services online helps cut costs for public administrations and also reduces red tape for businesses and citizens.  The report reveals the best and worst performers in the EU, focusing on two essential public services: 'finding a job' and 'starting a company'. Although Europe's national public administrations are moving in the right direction, there is still disparity between countries. There is also room for improvement in take up of eProcurement. As part of the Digital Agenda for Europe, the European Union aims for one out of two citizens and four out of five businesses to be using eGovernment services by 2015 (see IP/10/581, MEMO/10/199 and MEMO/10/200). The Report's findings give useful feedback on the objectives of the eGovernment Action Plan launched by the Commission in December 2010 to work with Member States' public authorities to expand and improve the services which they offer via the Internet

Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda said: "I am pleased that increasing numbers of EU citizens can now use online public services for major things like looking for a job, filing tax declarations or registering new companies. Member States who make basic public services fully available online can make life easier for their citizens and businesses, while reducing their own costs."

Over 80% of basic public services available online

The online availability of a basket of 20 basic public services, such as car registration, tax declaration or registration of a new company, across Europe reached 82% in 2010, substantially higher than in 2009 when it stood at 69%. The best performers are Austria, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Sweden where the entire list of those basic services is fully online. Bulgaria, Italy and Latvia showed a big improvement during the last year in making services available online. The report shows that services for businesses are more advanced than those for citizens.

Quality of services

This year's report focuses on the needs of both unemployed citizens and would-be entrepreneurs. It looks at the way public administrations cut red tape and make the entire range of public services needed to start up a company or to get back to work available in a streamlined way. This can take place through an online portal or automatically, for instance when registering for a tax identification number a business start-up will also automatically receive a VAT number as well. The report finds that 55% of services required to start up a company are provided either through a dedicated portal or automatically in Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Sweden and the UK. But only 46% of useful services for the unemployed are currently delivered through a dedicated portal.

eProcurement

Although 70% of public authorities have started working with eProcurement, its overall low take-up (best estimates place it at 5% of total procurement) does not yet allow for major benefits. If eProcurement were fully available, and more widely used, it could produce cost savings on public purchases as high as 30%.

Smaller municipalities, fewer online services

For the first time the report also looks at the regional and local dimension of eGovernment and highlights substantial disparities within countries. For services provided mainly at the local level, smaller municipalities display only half as much online availability as their larger counterparts. For instance, while the websites of smaller towns or cities may give information on how to request a copy of a birth certificate, large cities’ websites also include downloadable forms. The reason for this could be that smaller local administrations and their citizens prefer face-to-face contact or other more traditional channels, or that small administrations display a weaker capacity (strategy, funding, capability) to embrace online services.
The European Commission will continue to monitor the development of online public services across Europe and, through the eGovernment Action Plan, will work with Member States' public authorities to expand and improve the services they offer via the internet.

Background
The Commission's Benchmark report on the progress of eGovernment across the EU has been running since 2001. The objective of the survey is to benchmark the different European countries to compare progress and share best practices. The analysis covers more than 10 000 websites within the 27 Member States of the EU, plus Croatia, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey.
The benchmark analyses 12 basic online services for citizens: Income Taxes, Job Search, Social Security Benefits, Personal Documents, Car Registration, Application for Building Permission, Declaration to the Police, Public Libraries, Birth and Marriage Certificates, Enrolment in Higher Education, Announcement of Moving, Health-related Service and 8 online public services for businesses: Social Contribution for Employees, Corporate Tax, VAT, Registration of a New Company, Submission of Data to the Statistical Office, Custom Declaration, Environment-related Permits, Public Procurement.

-focus-fen.net