The National audit office has released a report examining how government departments measure the efficiency and effectiveness of their e-government initiatives. They failed miserably:

Only one agency had conducted a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the Internet was the most effective form of delivery for their online service. No agency had calculated an expected return on investment for providing the service. Despite having information on both costs and benefits, and having outlined this as one of the principles to be used in determining whether a particular service should be provided online, other agencies did not include a cost-benefit analysis in their business cases.

I’m clearly behind the eight ball on this one, but I’ve only just discovered why a bunch of arts organisations have progressively been asking me to replace government logos on various web sites I look after for them.

Turns out in 2003 the Federal Government decided to ban logos for its 100 or so departments and agencies. So no longer would they have their own individual branding, but instead have a single common government brand.

Here’s some good commentary on the notion. How bizarre. Let’s remove the last vistage of art and design in government, and ban departments from using creative, visual communication to project their values to the community.

Instead it’s all been replaced with the ultimate in blandness.

Charles Wright in his Bleeding Edge blog points out the US Can Spam Act seems to have had the opposite to the intended effect. Spam levels are up 20%, and the major spammers are apparently completely unpeturbed.

 Oh dear, her honour is clearly living in another era – 1984
springs to mind. Sure, let’s just scour the media for all references to
a person, and delete them. Not surprisingly, more informed pundits have
rightly consigned her honour to the silly bin.

A SUPREME Court judge has called for the
internet to be purged of any material likely to prejudice a trial, to
prevent jurors conducting their own investigations into cases they are
sitting on.

Read More

Well, they count dead people, apparently being deceased is not an impediment to obtaining media care:

UP to 500,000 dead people still have an
active Medicare number, leaving the health system exposed to serious
fraud and identity theft.

Read more

The internet, cheap, fast – a great educative tool – is being used to forge new links between children and their theatre. Suddenly, kids are writing plays, and professionals are performing them.

http://www.artshub.co.uk/ah1/news/news.asp?Id=69469

Thank heavens for capitalism. There’s nothing you can’t create a market out of.

BlogShares is a fantasy stock market for
weblogs. Players get to invest a fictional $500, and blogs are valued
by incoming links.

http://blogshares.com/index.php

If you’re a web designer you’ll love this:

http://twasink.net/blog/archives/2004/10/if_architects_h.html

Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I
need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere
between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such
that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the
blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also,
bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can
arbitrarily pick one.

Business 2.0 :: Online Article :: Converge Sense :: The Three-Screen Problem

Walk into any Silicon Valley gathering and all you’ll hear is one
person after another pontificating on “the three screens that dominate
our digital lives.” The three screens, of course, are television, the
personal computer, and the cell phone, which these same people then
posit will merge.

Interesting article, I hadn’t heard the phrase about 3 screens
before. But more interesting is the conclusion regarding content, that
many players have got it all the wrong way round, when they talk about
streaming existing tv content to mobile phones:

It’s the completely wrong way to treat the wireless platform. Brian
Levin, president of Seattle-based Mobliss, believes that wireless
networks need content that’s made specifically for mobile platforms. I
couldn’t agree more. Want people to watch TV on tiny screens? Think of
new types of content — funny shorts, quick news clips, movie trailers,
the JibJab video, and, of course, Barry Bonds’s 800th home run.

Business 2.0 :: Online Article :: Converge Sense :: The Rise of a New News Network

I think what we are seeing is the rise of a new kind of news network,
thanks in large part to technology. Average Joes and Janes are now
armed to the teeth with technology that can capture and distribute news
almost anywhere. A smartphone like the Nokia 6630 has more processing
power and is more connected to the Internet than a circa-1995 PC. The
high-speed connections, coupled with easy-to-use newsreader software
from startups like FeedDemon maker Bradbury Software, Ranchero
Software, and Videora, make it a breeze to gather and read all the news
in real time.
Already 32 million Americans are reading weblogs. That’s a large enough
number to make even the biggest skeptic believe that this is a real
revolution. How much of an impact will this have on the media giants?
It’s too early to tell. But as my colleagues over at Fortune suggest,
one thing’s for sure: This trend is too big to ignore.