Dr. Hercule Dalianis, Professor in Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Sweden followed with tthe example of grater Stockholm initiative where 1 millon patient data is collected over 3 year period. minor changes and improvements implemented – access, overview to the record, actual filling of part of it by the patient – means 20 million eur savings a year.

Lefteris Leontaridis, IKED/GINI

Thomas Anderson, IKED/GINI

Questions regarding more productive solutions for Global Identity Networks are some of afternoon’s topics at the Global Forum 2011. Thomas Anderson, IKED/GINI discussed the future policy challenges as well as the need for government intervention to address the issues in the sector. “We can open Europe to some more actions and also the articulation of the users.” added Mr. Anderson.  “Can I built an internet identity?” a rhetoric question by Lefteris Leontaridis, IKED/GINI, as well as the answer- “it’s difficult to erase and delete all the data collected”. Brendan van Alsenoy, ICRI, K.U. Leuven, IBBT/GINI draw the EU regulatory framework, as he stressed out the need of preserving privacy of the consumers and data protection. Questions related to the way operators combine cyber systems in order to become ‘ecosystem for trust to all the actors were also discussed.

Alan R. Shark, (Assistant Professor from Rutgers, The Sate University of New Jersey; CEO of PTI – Public Technology Institute) on intelligent communication and public sector involvement

Jon Shamah (Head of EMEA Sales, Nets eSecurity, United-Kingdom) and other speakers stressed the necessity of education in order to prevent digital natives from becoming digital Citizens. In other words, education could help children understand different privacy and identity issues.

Erika Mann (Head of EU Policy Brussels, Facebook; ICANN – Board of Directors) presented interesting data which contradicts general opinion about Facebook users. According Pew Research Center, social networking site users have more friends and more close friends, social networking sites are increasingly used to maintain contact with close social tie, only a small fraction of Facebook friends are people whom users  have never met or met only once, Facebook  users have more social support, and they are much more politically engaged compared with Americans of a similar age and education etc. (http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/technology-and-social-networks.aspx)

Jeremy Millard (Senior Consultant, Danish Technological Institute, Denmark) asserted that Internet and the Social Media usage are changing the relationship between Citizens and Governments. Speaker also presented few business cases (for instance, THMBNLS ) for  illustrating new ways of communication between citizens and government.

Andrey Korotkov, (Professor, Head Dept of International Journalism, MGIMO University;Former Deputy Minister of Communications and Informatization of RF, Russia) marked three new revolutions which our society is facing or will face very soon:

1. Active Internet usage
2. Widespread usage of cloud computing
3. Revolution of development in nanotbioelectronics in coming future.

Bartolome Arroyo-Fernandez (Head of Unit, Networked Media Systems (acting), DG )

Presentation on “Social media: Policy and Research issues”

98% of Europeans are aware of Social media

73% of Europeans Internet users use social network sites

Enterprises use social media for immediate feedback from the users, as well as for developing more personalised products. However, EC is concern about Children online. More than 38% 9-12 years old children have social network profile. They can be easily abused therefore European Commission is working to protect Children and strengthen the rules of social networking. Social networking evolving so fast that people cannot understand real threat for their identity.

Linda McCormack (Managing Principle of Verizon’s EMEA Communications and Mobility Professional Services Business Line) pointed that “we are social animals”: Internet empowers small economic players to compete with bigger players in more fare way because in Internet economy size does not matter so much anymore.

To sum up, social media is part of nowadays society; it changes the way how citizens, business are government are communicating. Since social media is new player in communication process, all issues are not yet taken into consideration for many of users. Therefore education is necessary.

Alain Viallix, Director, Public Affairs at Alcatel-Lucent, France: “Faster, smarter and greener Internet and reducing energy consumption is possible by alternative energy programs, which innovative companies should develop”.

Elisa Liberatori Prati, Chief Archivist Manager, World Bank Group

Elisa Liberatori Prati, Chief Archivist Manager, World Bank Group: “We need to invest in INFO management”. Mrs. Prati made reference to an disastrous scenario in case of not allocating such investments. “We need meta-data, available to provide public services. Otherwise collected paper data, just in state of Pennsylvania, might be seven times higher than mount Everest.”

Erika Mann, Head of EU Policy Brussels, Facebook; ICANN – Board of Directors just finished her presentation on Session 8. We selected a few interesting points she shared.

• Facebook brings the real life and digital reality together. The origins are a campus model. They wanted to bring a trusted relationship in the world.
• The lonely child who only has virtual friends is a myth, not reality. According to a recent survey, Facebook, users also know 97% of their friends in reality. 90% have ongoing relationships with the user.
• The study also discovered that Facebook users have more friends in the reality compared to the average population. These results confirm that Facebook does not have negative impact on real life relationships.

Comfort level with intimacy of course changes from one person to another. Each individual should be able to decide, what to share with whom. In the most recent Facebook version this became simpler to manage.

Hugo Kerschot, Managing Director, IS-Practice, Belgium structured the keynote opening session on cloud computing.

Karel de Vriendt, Advisor to the Director-General, DG INFORMATICS, European Comission emphasized that the EU policy on cloud computing is still in progress and provided a first definition of cloud computing: ‘a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.’ He outlined challenges like security & dependability and the possibility to reduce costs.

Gaetano Santucci, Manager Competence Center Unit, CONSIP S.p.A., Italy described the state and perspective of cloud computing in Italy. Local, regional and national clouds should be established in accordance to the existing infrastructure. This G-Cloud, PA 2.0. & Open data could fulfill the vision of an open government in Italy.

Masahiro Yoshizaki, Director-General for Policy Evaluation, Minister’s Secretariat, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan pointed out the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing and its enormous (upcoming) growth. Moreover, he presented representative initiatives in Japan.

AO SUN (Leo), President of Brussels Office and Europe Affairs Dept, Huwei Technologies talked about leadership beyond the cloud. He stated that we do not know exactly the upcoming challenge. According to him, it is possible to use experience from the past to succeed: openness (mindset and technology) and standards (e.g. platforms) of communication industries. He considers SIM-cards as important devices in this process.

John Vassallo, Vice-President EU Affairs, Microsoft EMEA regarded cloud computing as a solution to many issues like economic responsibility, lower, improvement of healthcare an the growth new businesses. Additionally, he highlighted the role of SMEs in the cloud.

Erik van Zuuren, Director Deloitte Enterprise Risk Services, Belgium talked about the trust challenge and eIdentity aspects. Many people consider cloud computing solemnly as an outsourcing project. Consequently, he provided a check-list consider all issues like data control & ownership, availability & reliability. He emphasized the need of a sustainable and trustful system.

Geert Mareels, eGov Manager, Flemish Government, Belgium introduced ‘Citadel’, a movement to make the Malmö vision real by identifying key objects. A new mission is to empower citizens to use open data to create smart mobile application that can be shared across Europe’s cities and to give people certain rights automatically.

Paul Timmers, Director Directorate H: ITC addressing Societal Challenges, DG INFSO, European Commission also considers uncertainty as a challenge. In this context, ICT as innovation could be regarded as an investment instead of costs and should be combined with new processes to get more benefits.

“At the end of this decade, the number of active Internet users may reach 20 billion and among the new users there will be things, not just people”, says Andrey Korotkov Professor, Head Dept of International Journalism, MGIMO University; Former Deputy.

He just spoke at Session 8: “Social networking: Identity in the eWorld”chaired by  Maurizio Talamo, Full Professor, University of Rome Tor Vergata; President Nestor Lab, Italy.

As part of his presentation “Changing perspectives through innovation”, Paul Timmers (Director Directorate H: ICT addressing Societal Challenges, DG INFSO, European Commission) is organizing a real time SMS poll. Conference participants are sending their opinions using their mobile phones and the results are displayed real-time. A real Wow moment. The digital future is now.