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Brig. Gen. Pasquale Lavacca.

Brig. Gen. Pasquale Lavacca, Gen. Head of III Reparto (Technology Department) Headquarters, Arma dei Carabinieri, Italy & Gianluigi Me, Major, Arma dei Carabinieri, gave a presentation on “E-Logistic Governance: The Carabinieri SILAC Project” at the conference.

“The panel was oriented to show how to manage economic expenditure in order to rationalize total overall expenditures, with a more focused strategy to find hidden cost-cutting savings,”Lavacca said.

With the economic situation as it has been,not just in Italy but world-wide,there has been a strong emphasis on finding cost-cutting measures.

One of these hidden cost cutting savings that the Carabinieri want to bring to the forefront, is streamlining logistics and tasks through online interfaces. ” We are creating more online government for citizen services, like the virtual operator and file/complaint,” said Lavacca.

The benefit of moving online is two-fold; the citizen is able to express concerns more directly to the Carabinieri, and at the same time the Carabinieri can increase savings allowing them to focus more on research and development, “where human resources are better tasked, in addition to homeland security and public safety,” said Lavacca.

Brig. Gen. Pasquale Lavacca and Major Gianluigi Me have made many presentations on this subject, including one at a conference at in Sofia, Bulgaria last May.

Lavacca said he is happy to present in the future to share the experience and benefits of the project, with organizations who also are looking to out-finance and out-fund their operations.

“In this period there is a big sufferance of funding with the global economic crisis. We believe we can fund this strategy with an automated tool in order to cut costs and add savings to re-imploy directly this very big building block,” said Lavacca, adding “this kind of savings bring jobs to power the communication and Information Technology systems, together with the overall security systems, of the Arma dei Carabinieri.”

Dr. Jay Gillette, Professor of Information and Communications Sciences at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, stopped by ActiveMedia‘s desk on Tuesday to share a unique degree program relevant to many Global Forum attendees.

According to Dr. Gillette, a Master of Science in Information and Communication Sciences is a unique and intense degree program where students complete  38 graduate credits in 11 months straight.

All students are required to blog and there are more than 60 active blogs, making the Ball State program program the most prolific bloggers in information systems education in the U.S. Check them out at: http://www.cicsworld.org/. Follow the Ball State University Center for Information & Comm. Sciences on Facebook or on Twitter @bsucics.

The last session of Global Forum 2010 also included female speakers from the Public Sector.  Kathleen Turco of GSA, who had also been a panelist at the Collaborative eProcurement session, stated that her entire career has been in the Federal government.  She has worked for 4 American federal government agencies and in most of these positions, she was the first woman to fill it.   She obtained these positions because she sought advice and did mentoring.  As a strong woman, Turco in turn likes to hire strong women!

Dr. Rachelle Heller of GWU, the host institution, jokingly thanked the panelists before her for making all of her points already.  Dr Heller stated that IT is “value and gender-neutral,” and research has shown that women are collaborative, can multi-task, and enjoy networking; IT is supported by these traits.  Furthermore, IT helps women’s voices be heard.  Studies have also been done where the same blogs were published with men’s, women’s, and neutral names (with initials).  Sadly, readers preferred the blogs of male writers over women writers.

In conclusion, chair Thaima Samman and President of the European Network for Women in Leadership, asked the panelists to give a 30 second conclusion.  Some panelists ended with a challenge.  Sharon Numes of IBM asked participants to think of the necessary and scarce resource of water: even if women in developing countries have access to cell phones and the internet, they will not have the time to use such technologies if they must spend have the day fetching water.  Linda Zecher of Microsoft encouraged women and men alike to contact local organizations and become a mentor to young girls.

Thaima Samman, Chair of Women's Innovation and Entrepreneurship session, as well as Kathleen Turco and Melanne Verveer

Following an inspiring speech by US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, Melanne Verveer, panelists from corporations such as IBM and Microsoft spoke on their experiences of women in technology and how their companies are contributing to this growth.

Linda Zecher, the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Sector, pointed out that women are over 50% of the world’s consumers.  Microsoft, being the consumer business that they are, understands that diversity of ideas, as well as ethnicities, is vital for success and growth in the workplace.  She noted that unfortunately, the number of women studying Computer Science has dropped in recent years.  Studies show that girls drop out of math and science because they feel it isn’t “cool” or experience teachers’ favoritism toward boys in these subject matters.  Zecher went on to explain Microsoft’s Digigirlz program, where mentors talk to girls about the jobs they can have in the IT field.

Sharon Numes, VP Smarter Cities of IBM, started that she has been involved in women in technology for 20 years and that in general, women like to work in areas where they will make a difference.  At IBM, she and colleagues focus on hiring and retaining women at their corporation.  Studies of why women don’t enter the tech/IT fields included perceived barriers.  When polled in 1997, American women said they thought barriers were, in order of importance, “male culture, work-life balance, lack of mentors, and access to key positions.”  In 10 years, women’s priorities have changed and barriers cited were “access to positions, male culture, exclusion from decision makers, and work-life balance.”

Microsoft's Linda Zecher

Ambassador Melanne Verveer

An extensive panel of women was present at the final session of the Global Forum including the keynote speaker, Melanne Verveer, US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues.  The ambassador emphasized that ITC enables women in developing countries to succeed.  To illustrate this point, she told the story of a female farmer from India who cultivates lilies. Once this woman obtained a cell phone, she could find markets for her business while picking lilies.  The result was that she saved time and money.

The ambassador was recently in China, where she visited a training center outside Beijing made by and for women.  Here girls from remote areas were brought together to learn how to use computers.  It is a true success story because not a single one was jobless after leaving the training center.  While pointing out there is definitely a gender gap in the world, Ambassador Verveer “sees the power that IT represents.”  Though pressed for time, the ambassador agreed to answer questions and wanted to hear what other countries were doing for women in technology.

Laszlo Horvath, who founded Active Media in 1995, stated that his company was among the first to jump into online advertising.  According to Mr Horvath, the winners will be those who “capture or own the audience;” they are the ones will make the most money.  Active Media has for-profit and non-profit organizations as clients.  Active Media’s president then went on to talk about SEs (search engines) and stated that “the most important interface is not the website itself but the search engine.”  One may be surprised to know that Youtube is the 2^nd biggest search engine.  Mr Horvath concluded that controlling your digital footprint allows you to effectively reach your clients.

More can be found about Active Media at http://www.activemedia.com.

global forum attendees listen attentively to Tuesday morning's keynote speakers.Photo by Heather Hodder.

Moderated by Madeline Slosteen Thiel, Senior Program Manager Services&IT implementation Department, Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems-VINNOVA, the panel discussion covered topics from online trust and

Keynote speakers included : Beatrice Covassi, Counselor for the Digital Agenda, European Union,Delegation to the US, European Union, Ulf Dahlsten,  Principal Adviser DG Competition, European Commission, Martin Kohn, Associate Director, Healthcare Analytics, IBM, USA,  Cecilio Madero Villarejo, Director DC Comepetition, European Commission, Robert Morin, Secretary Genearl Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission-CRTC, Canada and Commissioner Thomas J. Rosch, Federal Trade Commission- FTC, USA.

“We’re looking to create user-generated tools to solve problems for tomorrow,” said Ulf Dahlsten, European Commission.

Dahlsten’s remarks resonated with many of the speakers who’s goverment programs are looking to also be one step ahead of  consumer needs of the future.

Speakers discussed the need for getting more people online, focusing on eLearning and digital training.

” The global village is going digital in a hurry, ” said Robert Morin, of  CRTC, Canada.

“In June 2009  new measures were announced for people with disabilities  that required wireless providers offer at least one device for people with hearing impairments,” said Morin, “Devices for special needs for visual or hearing impairment is a growing sector in Canada. Anyone can find themselves living with  a dissability, not just Canadians.”

” Not only is there market potential, but social responsibility, ” Morin added.

Martin  Kohn, Associate Director of Healthcare Analytics for IMB,  also stressed the importance of social responsibility with advancing technology.

” A strong relationship between physicians and patients helps overall opinion of healthcare,” said Kohn, in explaining the strategy behind empowering healthcare consumers, through advanced technology and streamlined medical information.

Not only does it make patients happier, but lightens the workload for physicians too.

Moving towards digital healthchart’s is a major improvement from the old system, ” Their worst fear [physicians] is  digging out a file a 23 page report for an elderly patient, ” said Morin.

” New technology is not a solution [for social problems], but it’s a tool to move towards a more effective system, to reduce costs,” Morin said.

The Human Web double-decker bus

Sarah Boener of the Human Web spoke on her organization and their usage of video media.  The Human Web is a Non-profit social platform made up of visual and performing artists who share the mission of eliminating linguistic and cultural borders.  Their main goal is to make people to realize we have more similarities than differences.  The Human Web travels to remote locations in an outfitted orange double-decker bus over 45 days with 20 people. So far they have done 2 trips:  Italy to Turkey, then Turkey to Eastern Europe.  Their end goal is to touch every location possible by road.  Boener explained when they travel on the bus and stop at a town or village, local talent is sought out to do a festival.  She also noted that Human Web has a strategic agreement with Cirque du Soleil.