Today, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel and Senior Vice President, Legal and Corporate Affairs, gave the commencement speech for winter graduation at Washington State University.
Brad spoke about the importance of seizing every opportunity by fully committing yourself to your endeavors, how innovation and new ideas are the catalyst to move not only the state of Washington, but the country forward, and the need for everyone to make a commitment to community involvement.
We have sought leave of the court to amend our complaint to add Vertro Inc. as another defendant involved as an upstream provider of illegitimate click traffic for RedOrbit.
Posted by Peter Cullen Chief Privacy Strategist
Any discussion of online privacy today can quickly become polarized and shed more heat than light. It is clear that privacy remains a key topic and also clear the discussion centers on finding the right balance of investments by both companies and the advertising industry that will provide meaningful choice, control and protection for the consumer’s information and that contribute to growing consumer trust and which supports the content to which people have grown accustomed. Privacy by Design is but one investment area receiving a lot of dialogue. Today we announced functionality we intend to provide in IE9 that both advances and demonstrates Privacy by Design and provides consumers with more choices to control information about their online activities. However, the industry together can also continue to contribute additional investments that will help grow trust.
By Craig ShankGeneral Manager, Interoperability Group
In a Brussels speech last week, Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda, said: “We are now living through a permanent digital revolution. This long and peaceful revolution is changing how we organize our lives. Powerful computing platforms are creating new markets and we are finding new ways to leverage user creativity.”
One of the ways that this digital revolution manifests itself is in how citizens expect to interact with government. Especially in light of the economic downturn, citizens the world over are increasingly calling for greater transparency, greater accountability, greater efficiency and ease of use in government services akin to that offered by online service providers like Amazon, eBay and others.
The move toward e-government has been under way for quite some time, but efforts have often been stymied by organizational, legal, semantic and technical obstacles. For example, data is often locked up in islands of legacy technology, governments have differing legal requirements for access to that data, and the meaning of similar data in different systems can vary substantially. Far-flung geographies, multiple languages and complex nation-state relationships – such as those faced by agencies working on e-government solutions in India and the European Union – further complicate challenges facing the public sector.
Governments increasingly recognize these challenges and are stepping up their efforts to improve how they deliver service digitally. This week OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), a worldwide standards consortium, together with the World Bank’s e-Development Group, will hold a Transformational Government Workshop in Washington, D.C., which is designed to help the public sector use information and communications technology (ICT) more effectively. Next week in Brussels, representatives from EU member states will meet at the Lift-off towards “Open Government” conference, which has a particular focus on cross-border interoperability for e-Government services.