A recently published survey shows that 71% of local councils cite engaging with young people as their main priority when establishing e-democracy initiatives. New technologies are changing the way local authorities engage with citizens and many believe young people could benefit most from such projects.

The poll sampled 178 English local authorities and found that e-democracy is still a relatively new undertaking for many councils. Only one in five so far have any kind of e-democracy strategy in place and the level of investment in these initiatives varies widely between local authorities. A further 30% of local authorities have plans to introduce such schemes but have yet to implement their proposals. The most common use of e-democracy are online comments, compliments and complaint systems. Online residents’ surveys are also popular. But, according to the survey, many councils are not doing all that they could, there is often a clear disparity between services offered off-line and those made available online.

The results of the survey, undertaken by the MORI Social Research Institute on behalf of the Local e-democracy National Project, show that these schemes do work and local councils succeed in increasing public involvement in the areas where they have piloted e-democracy tools.

A report released by the London School of Economics (LSE) has found the UK government’s plans to introduce a national biometric ID card deeply flawed, reports Silicon.

Although the LSE is not against the idea of national ID cards, it believes the current proposals are too complex, technically unsafe, overly prescriptive and lacking a foundation of public trust and confidence. The report also raised concerns of the feasibility of the scheme from the IT suppliers who are likely to work on it.

“The proposed system unnecessarily introduces, at a national level, a new tier of technological and organisational infrastructure that will carry associated risks of failure. A fully integrated national system of this complexity and importance will be technologically precarious and could itself become a target for attacks by terrorists or others,” said the LSE

Despite opposition from the Liberal Democrats, the ID card bill was approved by MPs last month, and it is due for its second reading in the House of Lords this week. The government hopes to get it passed into law before the likely May election, but some MPs think it will have to be dropped.

Liberal Democrat MP Richard Allan thinks the government should wait until after the election to re-think its “half-baked” ID card proposal.

“Thankfully it looks like the government will run out of time. If the bill can’t be properly scrutinised then it is entirely wrong to put it on the statute book. It will be best if they quietly let it die and then think again about the whole notion of a national identity register and ID cards,” he said.

The most troubling part of the report was the IT community’s reluctance to endorse the plan, especially since they stand to gain huge profits from government contracts.

Professor Patrick Dunleavy, from the LSE’s government department, told Silicon: “It is troubling contractors and suppliers. There is a chorus of dissent and disquiet about the scheme. We have received input from suppliers that the cost would be considerable and if the process produces a very costly and ultimately failed or only partially successful project this is highly damaging for the firms involved.”

Online fraud experts have reported that internet phone services in the US are more susceptible to caller ID spoofing than landline alternatives. A series of scams over the last few months has highlighted the lower level of security protecting Voice Over Internet Protocol. Some internet phone services allow scam artists to make it appear that they are calling from another phone number, making it possible for them to obtain private financial information and to drain credit accounts.

According to CNN.com VOIP, which has become increasingly popular in the US because of its comparative affordability, remains vulnerable to the same security problems as email. The telecommunication company AT&T also voiced fears that VOIP calls may be more easily monitored or altered. Another potential problem highlighted by Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras was that unscrupulous telemarketers will soon be using VOIP to blast consumers with a massive number of voice messages, a technique known as SPIT (”spam over internet telephony.”)

While this has yet to become a major issue, caller ID fraud is a growing problem. Caller ID spoofing is not prohibited by US law, but a spokesperson for the US Federal Communications Commission said that telemarketers are required to identify themselves accurately. Currently with some VOIP services, it requires relatively little technical expertise to alter caller ID information.

Wire-transfer services in the US often require users to call from their home phone line as a means of verifying ID, a system open to fraud via VOIP; it is also possible to use this technique to fraudulently access voicemail accounts. Research is underway to devise ways of preventing such fraud but currently these vulnerabilities are still open to exploitation.

A senator from North Carolina is trying to get Solitaire and Minesweeper banned from state workers’ computers, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Republican Senator Austin Allran has sponsored the piece of legislation, saying that taxpayers would be outraged to find out how much time state employees waste at work playing these games.

Allran’s bill is seen as a very specific response to the rising concern of the productivity of America’s newest worker class, the information-technology (IT) professional. Research done by the IRS shows that half the time an IRS employee goes on a computer is spent shopping, gambling, or playing games online.

“We can’t expect people to be saints in the office, but once the fingers have been pointed and the accusations made, there does have to be a standard established for how people use software games and when they use them,” says Peter Sepp, a vice president at the National Taxpayers Union in Alexandria, Va.

Some argue, however, that allowing workers to spend time playing games on the company dime improves productivity. For workers who spend their day staring at a computer screen, pursuing leisure activities on the job could be seen as an expression of individuality that improves morale.

“If you go back to the middle of the 19th century and the writings of Karl Marx, workers under the factory system would lose a considerable amount of their identity and a sense of ownership with what they were doing,” says Bill Snizek, a work sociologist at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg. “What employers today have to decide is whether permitting employees at certain prescribed times to gain some amount of psychic enjoyment by playing games will make up for some of the lost identity and pride in work.”

IT workers in North Carolina say that Allran’s bill belittles what they do.

“A popular view of government is that you sit around and take a day to sharpen a pencil, but it’s not like that,” says one woman in North Carolina’s Department of Cultural Resources public-affairs office. “When I was not in state government, sure I’d see [some people playing games], but it’s quite the opposite here. People are just scrambling to get their work done within a normal business day.”

A police station in the Mumbles has unveiled its new interactive kiosk, the first of several South Wales Police intend to introduce across the region later on in the year. The kiosks have been developed in partnership with BT and include a videophone on which people can speak directly to a control room officer at any time.

The kiosks, which will also provide internet access, aim to give the public 24 hour access to the police in areas where that may not have been previously available.

The scheme is being piloted in the Swansea Police Station but South Wales Police plans to install similar units in other police station foyers, as well as in supermarkets and hospital accident and emergency departments. Kiosks will also replace selected BT phone boxes. Paul Hendron, Director of BT Payphones commented: “Although the concept of Police Forces using Multimedia Kiosks is not new, developing video telephony as part of the offering is.”

A number of security features have been included in Mumbles ‘virtual’ police station; if an individual feels threatened they can use the kiosk to seal off the foyer and be monitored by CCTV until a response vehicle arrives.

A spokesperson for South Wales Police insisted that the installations are not being made alongside any closure programme for police stations, but will instead provide an alternative method of contacting the police. While the scheme should make communication with the police easier for those in more remote areas of the region, is it really a satisfactory alternative to a physical police presence?

On Tuesday the New Media Awards Weblog published a story (“Mobile to Ride”) about mobile phones being used as bus or train tickets in Tyne and Wear. Since then, Andy Bairstow, the Commercial Director of Nexus, the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive, has been in touch with a more thorough explanation of this new system.

According to Bairstow, there are over 200 ticket machines in Tyne and Wear that only take coins. For every £1 earned, 10p are needed to manage, maintain, and empty the coinage. Two-thirds of ticket revenue come from coins, which is not a cost-effective way of issuing tickets.

The machines currently being used are too old to be updated so that they can accept credit cards and notes. If customers do not have the right value of coins they can not purchase a ticket. This often forces commuters to buy cheap items, such as newspapers, to get change. Bairstow sees this system as being unfriendly to users.

Mobile phone ticketing is a solution to this problem.

“The mobile phone ticketing trial is an attempt to reduce costs and improve accessibility,” said Bairstow.

Under the new system, customers set up an account with a credit or debit card and text Nexus to purchase a ticket. The value of this is then debited from their account.

An SMS text message is then sent to customers containing a unique code that ticket inspectors can identify. The text includes all the information found on a normal ticket, such as the type of ticket purchased and the time it was bought.

Safeguards have been built in to the system to prevent fare dodging. Customers are unable to forward the message to another phone, and the SMS takes approximately five minutes to reply, preventing tickets from being quickly purchased when an inspector is seen.

“This is very much a trial but is going well,” said Bairstow. “The technology works, and we are currently assessing the market response to it. It has obvious advantages. Customers do not need change, they are not forced to queue for ticket machines, and the tickets can be bought in advance.”

There’s been a lot of talk about the newly developed Red Tacton system of data transfer in this week’s technology press. Developed by Japanese communication company NTT (the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation), the technology makes use of weak electric fields on the surface of the body to transfer information.

Red Tacton works by means of transceivers equipped with optical sensors capable of detecting fluctuations in these electric fields. In this way data can be transferred simply by touching your finger to a screen or even by one person touching another. While Blue Tooth and Wi-fi have made ‘personal area networks’ a reality, Red Tacton promises the ability to transfer data at speeds up to 10 Mbps across the surface of the skin.

Data transfer would not just be confined to the surface of the body, it will also be able to travel through clothing. According to Guardian Online a Red Tacton-enabled device would, for example, enable music from an MP3 player in your pocket to pass through your clothing and over your body to the headphones in your ears. Unlike other wireless transmission methods, the transmission speed in these human area networks shoudn’t fade in congested environments, instead an increase in the number of connected users would directly increase the available number of individual communication channels.

Research is underway to enable data carried on your person, in a phone say, or a memory stick, to be transmitted to all nearby computers. While fascinating this is still very much at the laboratory stage of development; whether NTT will deliver on its claims remains to be seen.

Animal rights activists may soon have a new cause to rally against – leather computers. Inclosia Solutions has developed a process called Exo Overmolding that can be used to add leather, fabrics, or metal to PC enclosures, reports CNET News.com.

Before the Exo process was developed, leather would have to be glued to a PC. The Exo process attaches the natural exteriors of leather to the plastic during an injection molding process, which prevents peeling and allows leather to be wrapped around curves and angles without leaving wrinkles. A leather-bound Hewlett-Packard handheld created by Inclosia is already on the market.

“It is permanently fused on,” said Tom Tarnowski, global marketing manager at Inclosia.

Tulip Computers has created six prototypes for leather-bound E-Go notebooks that are expected to be brought to the European market in October 2005.

Tulip was a succesful brand decades ago, selling Commodore PCs in the United States and a variety of PCs in Europe. In the late 1990s, sales began to decline. Tulip hopes that, like Apple Computer did with the original iMac in 1998, it will be able to resurrect its brand by turning the PC into a fashion statement.

Casing a notebook in leather “typically adds a couple of dollars to the cost of a housing,” said Tarnowski. This can translate to better profits. Microsoft currently offers a leather IntelliMouse that costs 20 percent more then the plastic model, although the two are electronically identical.

Parents will soon be able to use the internet to check up on their children’s progress at school under plans unveiled yesterday by Schools’ Minister Derek Twigg. The strategy will utilise new technology across the education system, granting schools, universities and other associated organisations greater capabilities to meet the particular needs of their learners.

In Harnessing Technology: Transforming Learning and Children’s Services, Twigg sets out plans to have all schools equipped with broadband by 2006, to improve online services for special needs learners and to use online resources to grant parents greater access to their children’s progress reports.

Under the DfES proposals parents will be able to become more connected with their child’s education. Twigg hopes that these measures will help parents, particularly of secondary school pupils, get around the well-known reluctance of children to discuss their school day, by making the information directly available to them online. A pilot of the scheme is already in operation at Millfields Community School in Hackney where parents are encouraged to contact the school by e-mail.

“Imaginative use of ICT will open up a new world of possibilities in education,” Derek Twigg commented. “As far as I can see, there’s no reason why most information shouldn’t be made available. We’re already talking about giving more information to parents, so there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be accessed online.”

Many of Twigg’s proposals are still in the planning stages and no date has been set for the scheme to be fully implemented; it doesn’t yet address the needs of parents without home internet access. While some aspects of the scheme will certainly be beneficial to learners, there is the worry that giving parents such access will only increase the existing pressure on many pupils, and anyway what was so wrong with the default answer of “fine” when asked how things went at school?

Residents of Tyne and Wear may soon be able to use their mobile phones as bus or train tickets, reports BBC Online.

Metro operator Nexus is setting up a trial in which tickets will be issued via text messages and fares will be deducted from mobile phone bills.

A similar system is already in place in the Finnish capital Helsinki. Nexus is optimistic that the idea will catch on with the UK’s young, who have the highest rate of mobile use.

The Tyne and Wear trial is being funded by the EU, which is also implementing similar schemes in Bucharest and Bologna.

Nexus hopes the new system will help cut fare dodging, reduce traffic congestion and speed up travel with fewer queues for tickets at machines.

“This system is already 100% operational, with a real live trial of 100 customers underway,” said Nexus Commercial Director Andy Bairstow.

“A lot of time and effort has gone into an idea which makes ticket-buying easier than ever - and this could prove to be a major breakthrough for public transport in the UK.”

The technical specifics of this project are vague, and it is unclear how drivers will identify whether travellers have purchased a ticket on their mobile phone.