I.D cards in U.K

I.D card gone wrong in U.K


The idea of compulsory ID cards in the UK has dealt a blow to government conviction that the public supported the idea.A consultation into the issue, due to conclude had shown that a 2-1 majority of citizens favoured the idea of compulsory ID cards.The government was accused of using Orwellian language to convince the public that ID cards were a good idea while others questioned the cost and uses of the £1.5bn database of biometric information necessary to support the scheme.This card is light purple and light pink in colour. The card holder's British nationality is listed clearly; this card can be used for travel within the European Economic Area and Switzerland.The cards themselves carry biographical data, as well as facial and fingerprint scans. While some details about the holder as well as their photo is printed on the face of the card, the cardholder's fingerprints can only be accessed by reading the chip.the chip is a "vital part" of the ID card scheme because the "fingerprint coded into the chip, links you to the card".

The identity card for British citizens will be cancelled later this year, after which it will no longer be valid.

Vote against government

Privacy International has also launched an ID card hotline, allowing members of the public to vote either in favour or against the idea by phone.

The messages will be converted to audio files and forwarded to the Home Office consultation team, which has agreed that the files will count as legitimate responses.

This is an unequivocal vote against the government," said Privacy International's Director Simon Davies.

"People are learning at the eleventh hour why this proposal is so dangerous. Public support for the ID card is dropping by more than one percent per hour," he added.

The government was accused of using Orwellian language to convince the public that ID cards were a good idea while others questioned the cost and uses of the £1.5bn database of biometric information necessary to support the scheme.

What your identity card says about you

Your card will carry the following information about you:

• your photograph
• your full name
• your gender
• the place and date of your birth
• an image of your signature
• if you are a British citizen, your nationality

The identity card's security features

The cards security features include:

• colour-changing ink
• a hologram
• a lens image
• elevated text
• a unique background design

Recommendation:  for Kenya to apply such a system will be to costly because Kenya has other issues to solve better than making such I.D cards which costs billions of pounds and U.K did not pass in it even so its no use of Kenya to try.

Change to Access to Digital Technology

Kenya 
Mobile Phones: transferring “E-Money” to anyone with a mobile phone and paying for call time on mobile phones. By the end of 2008, half of Kenya’s population had mobile phones. By the end of 2009, over one-fifth of the population had mobile phone e-money accounts

How the system works

Mobile money transfer services are accessed via an application installed on the user's SIM card.
The user can create a free account and deposit money into it for free with registered agents at retail outlets. They may be gas stations, supermarkets, banks or micro-finance providers or small and medium-sized businesses. No minimum account balance is required.
The user can then transfer up to $440 from the account to someone else — including someone who doesn't have a cellphone. The recipient provides identification and picks up the cash from another registered agent.
Users can deposit and withdraw cash, pay water and electricity bills, pay their children's school fees, get paid by their employers or buy extra airtime for their phone.
Not even agents themselves need a computer or internet service — they can record the customer's transactions on their own mobile phones.
Deposits are typically free, but a fee of about 30 cents to $5 is charged for most other transactions.

Voting: The 

recent electronic voter registration 

was the first big step towards technology-driven elections. The management of this system seems good as one cannot register twice, and the data is stored safely,as fingerprints were electronically taken, and moments later, a Webcam snapshot. Its faster, accurate and convenient as you can back up data in case of any mishap. It also minimises room for mistakes.

Geographic Information System (GIS):

The system makes reliable data on the country’s ICT networks and infrastructure available for the first time, at the click of a mouse, promising to greatly facilitate the design of models for universal service provision, as well as the monitoring of related targets. 

It can present information on landline and mobile phone services, postal and broadcasting networks in various formats, including maps, tables, and graphs, and “will provide local researchers and all investors with fast and timely information from a central location.

Quality of Service Monitoring System: 

This is about 

monitor the quality of Kenya’s mobile phone services. Variables such as sound quality, signal strength, data-transfer speeds, and system congestion can all be tracked, with a view to improving service in the rapidly expanding sector. T

he the new Quality of Service Monitoring System will “enhance consumer protection.

Nigeria 

IT usage in Nigeria cuts across the major sectors of the economy: The use of computers in manufacturing - with the exception of certain high-technology process industries in which the process computer is essentially a part of the process machinery (e.g. petroleum refining and the steel mill) - is only a recent phenomenon.In fact, computerization has been most widespread in the area of financial management, including payroll, accounts, general ledger, sales, and invoicing. More than 80 per cent of computer installations are used in this way. There are also many instances of companies that have not installed computers but have their accounts and payroll batch-processed on a bureau computer owned by a vendor or an agency.

The banking and financial industry, computerization is still limited to ledgers: Communication, and current account management  There are no automated telling machines, nor are multi-branching facilities available. However, the service to the customer is improving in many respects, including "quick service" cash counters, and prompt and regular monthly statements of account. In general, the thrust of computerization in banks is in the direction of more automation and networking, but the rate of progress is limited by the ineffective telecommunications infrastructure in the country. Other service industries, such as advertising, also use IT mainly for word processing and accounting functions

The communications field: The Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL), the national carrier, is heavily computerized, with a huge installed capacity including mainframes, minis, and micros. The machines are used for administrative purposes and for the management of the telephone network. At present, they function on a stand-alone basis, but it is known that NITEL is interested in interconnecting these machines in both local and wide area networks for greater efficiency and increased flexibility. The National Television Authority (NTA) is computerized, and so are the leading telecommunications outfits represented in Nigeria. However, the postal agencies are yet to adopt the use of IT in sorting mails.

Government departments are rapidly computerizing: As many as 13 federal ministries have computers; the Ministry of Defence alone has 9 installations. The Ministry of Works operates a computerized maintenance system. The Federal Office of Statistics, the national body responsible for the gathering and compilation of statistical data ranging from trade statistics to commodity prices and population data, is fully computerized. In almost all the 25 federal universities there are well-staffed computing centres equipped with time-shared multi-user mainframe computers used for teaching and research. In addition, several departments and faculties have their own computer facilities, consisting mainly of micros. Many university computing centres also provide computer services for the administrative departments, such as the bursary, the registry, and the library.

For the general public: Only a few homes have computers but IT training centres and cybercafes are spread across Nigeria, especially in the major cities (Adomi, E.E., Okiy, R.B., & Ruteyan, J.O., 2003). These centres provide IT training as well as allow people to do word processing, send e-mails, and browse the Internet.

Overall: IT usage in Nigeria is widespread but the depth is very shallow. The reasons for these, which are similar to those in other developing countries, include: very low literacy level; extremely low density of telecommunications facilities and services; underdeveloped computing infrastructures and culture; government regulations; corruption in both public and private organizations; and lack of a coordinated national IT policy

how people communicated after and before the 2004 Tsunami

Tsunami (2004)

How Warnings were sent from countries???

How it detects Tsunami!

Signals from NOAA Pacific Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) from stations in Australia triggered an alarm that alerted watchstanders. PTWC issues a Tsunami Information Bulletin providing information on the earthquake and stating there is no tsunami threat to Pacific coasts. It is a text message distributed by multiple means to participants of the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific. PTWC also advises the following offices by telephone as part of its standard operating procedure:




1) Hawaii Civil Defense,
2) Pacific Command (PACOM) of U.S. Military Forces,
3) U.S. Navy-Hawaii Region
4) International Tsunami Information Center.


PTWC issued bulletin No. 2 revising the earthquake magnitude to 8.5 based on later seismic energy. That bulletin stated no tsunami threat to the Pacific but identified the possibility of a tsunami near the epicenter. PTWC attempts to contact the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to verify if they received the bulletin. As their main line was busy, they called Emergency Management Australia instead. EMA indicated Australia was aware of the earthquake.


PTWC received a call from a Sri Lanka Navy Commander inquiring about the potential for further tsunami waves from aftershocks. The U.S. Ambassador in Sri Lanka called PTWC to set up a notification system in case of big aftershock.PTWC issues a message to the Tsunami Bulletin Board that goes by e-mail to international tsunami scientists and organizations. The message reports that based on the Reuters news wire article, a destructive tele-tsunami was generated by the Sumatra earthquake. PTWC receives a call from a Sri Lanka Navy Commander inquiring about the potential for further tsunami waves from aftershocks. The U.S. State Department Operations Center calls 


PTWC and is advised of the potential threat to the western Indian Ocean and eastern Africa. They agree to set up a conference call with U.S. embassies in the region. The U.S. State Department Operations Center sets up a conference call with the U.S. embassies at Madagascar and Mauritius. 


The Next day December 27 PTWC issued a third Tsunami Information Bulletin for this event informing the Pacific that small sea level fluctuations from the Indian Ocean tsunami 


How ordinary people communicate???


A son of a fisherman who works in Singapore, He decided to phone home When he asked what was happening in Nallavadu she told him that seawater was seeping into their home. He asked his sister to quickly leave their home and to also warn other villagers to evacuate the village. 'Run out and shout the warning to others'. The warning from Vijayakumar, collaborated at this time by a second overseas telephone call from Gopu, another villager working abroad, was broadcast across the village using the loud-speaker system. The village's siren was sounded immediately afterwards for the people to evacuate.


People who have never blogged before have turned to the web to share their gripping accounts and upload their photos and home video, offering a raw, unedited perspective on the human tragedy.


The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) joined the ranks of mainstream media now clicking into the blogosphere by publishing first-hand blog reports and images from many of these non-professional eyewitnesses. 


A blog is now defined in Merriam Webster's Dictionary as a "website that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer". In light of the heroic service provided by these dedicated bloggers in informing relatives in the West about the missing, the timely and sensitive postings of photos of located orphaned children, and the call for relief action, that definition may be compassionately broadened in the near future. As 2004 ended, the world witnessed in this digital era the poignant pleas of survivors, families desperately seeking information for loved ones and disturbing images transmitted through the World Wide Web. 


Paola di Maio survived the tsunamis's impact on the beach in Phuket, Thailand, and with available Internet connectivity on the island, communicated to Peter Griffin, a communications consultant in Mumbai, India, that the most pressing need was for accurate information. These Internet evangelists quickly set up the Sea-Eat blog, or The Southeast Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog, tsunamihelp.blogspot.com. 


Australian Geoffrey Huntley, 22, at www.waveofdestruction.com, started his blog immediately after the tsunami hit. He was not prepared for the sheer amount of traffic and his server crashed many times. His site went from 39,000 page serves, a web page that has been viewed by one visitor, to over 3 million in less than 48 hours. 


Other bloggers, such as John Lebkowsky (polycot.com), are even more committed to discussions on what went wrong since the world knows all too painfully that there was no available tsunami detection information in the Indian Ocean and apparently no one at the warning center had the telephone numbers of their neighboring scientists in Indonesia, Malaysia and eastern India. 


Conclusion: The tsunami  killed many people as there were no detectors at the Indian ocean so al few people's life were saved and communication was not so effective. after the 2005 major actions have been taken place they have a warning system where it would help to predict earthquakes in the ocean