Europe eyes new rules for online platforms
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Europe eyes new rules for online platforms
By Natasha Lomas as written on techcrunch.com
The European Union’s executive body has today set out a series of proposals for new rules that would apply to a broad range of online platforms, from the likes of YouTube to Google to eBay, as part of ongoing efforts to boost competitiveness in the region under its Digital Single Market Strategy.
The proposals follow a year long assessment by the European Commission of online platforms, after which it says it has concluded that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is not appropriate to maximize consumer benefits while ensuring effective regulation across all the different types of platforms — so it says it will rather look at each area where it can act “from telecoms to copyright rules, to address any specific problems in a future-proof way for all market players”.
Among the proposed changes is a new set of audiovisual rules — with the stated aim of achieving a better balance between rules that apply to traditional broadcasters vs online video-on-demand providers and video-sharing platforms like YouTube. Key among the EC’s concerns here is safeguarding minors.
It says it wants video-sharing platforms to help come up with a code of conduct for the industry relating to protecting minors online. For the most harmful content (gratuitous violence and pornography) it wants to strict control measures applied to online platforms, such as age verification or pin codes.
Under the proposals there would also be a stronger role for audiovisual regulators.
At this stage the EC is not including social network platforms such as Facebook — where plenty of video-sharing and viewing now takes place of course — in its definition of online platforms but it does say this could change in future. “If a particular social media provider meets all the characteristics of a video-sharing platform, they will be covered as such,” it notes.
These proposals are an update to the existing Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AMSD), which has governed audiovisual media in the region for almost 30 years. The existing directive also includes stipulations to encourage cultural diversity and the free circulation of content within Europe, which the EC wants to see bleeding over to the online platforms that viewers are increasingly turning to in the digital era.
Under current rules, for example, TV broadcasters are obliged to broadcast at least 50 per cent share of European works (including national content) in viewing time. This proportion will remain unchanged under the proposal but VOD services would get more formal obligations — with a proposed requirement that they have at least a 20 per cent share of European content in their catalogues, and give good visibility to European content in any offers.
Elsewhere, the Commission has also been looking at the rules around ad content, and says it wants greater flexibility for online platforms to use product placement and sponsorship — with the caveat that they must keep viewers informed at the start or end of a program. Product placement will still be forbidden in content with a significant children’s audience.
Also today the Commission has set out additional proposals for updating ecommerce rules — with a push to prevent unjustified geoblocking, such as discriminating on price based on nationality or residency, by online platforms.
In moves aimed at boosting trust in ecommerce it also wants search engines to be required to “clearly distinguish” paid placements from organic search results. And the industry to step-up voluntary efforts to tackle fake/misleading online reviews.
Increasing price-transparency and regulatory oversight of cross-border parcel delivery services to boost regional ecommerce is another priority.
The Commission is also focusing on controlling the spread of hate speech on online platforms — an issue which has again bubbled to the fore in Europe in recent times, following the refugee crisis.
A code of conduct the EC has been working on with online platforms is due to be presented in the coming weeks, it said today.
The package of measures are proposals at this stage with European law requiring EU Member States to vote on and agree them, and transpose them into national legislation — a process that can take multiple years.
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Today at the Municipal Information Systems Association of California (MISAC) meeting Sean Ferrel presented the latest business insights by Microsoft that are transforming the modern workplace
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Today at the Municipal Information Systems Association of California (MISAC) meeting Sean Ferrel presented the latest business insights by Microsoft that are transforming the modern workplace
Managed Solution is the premier provider of IT support services and technology recommendations for the government sector. Founded in 2002, we enjoy a proud tradition of partnering with the IT staff of the many organizations we work with. We can even act as your IT team. For more information on government specific solutions contact Managed Solution at 800-220-4432 or fill out the contact form.
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Civic Tech Brings Power And Positivity To The People Via @TechCrunch
Civic Tech Brings Power And Positivity To The People Via
By Stacy Donohue (@StacyDon) as written on Techcrunch.com
People have long had a complicated relationship with their governments — a tension that often is exacerbated by government policies and processes that cannot keep pace with today’s on-demand culture.
It doesn’t have to be like this. The tech community — especially those working in civic tech — know this to be true. From enabling crowdfunding campaigns to revamping entire cities’ tech infrastructure, civic tech empowers people to turn challenges and frustrations with government into opportunities for a new business, a new career or a new voice.
With the growing interest and support from the investment community, there has never been a better time to jump in to the civic tech movement.
The momentum is truly a tribute to those who have championed civic tech for years, including Jake Brewer, the senior policy advisor to U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith who died in a bicycle accident during a cancer charity ride. As President Obama noted, Jake “dedicated his life to empowering people and making government work better for them,” and his legacy will certainly help propel forward the civic tech movement for generations to come.
Here are three ways those in and out of Silicon Valley can help create positive change in the relationship between the governing and the governed.
Make It Personal
Civic tech entrepreneurs look at pain points as fuel for change. In fact, some of the best civic tech businesses have been born out of the challenges their founders faced.
Take Dan Brillman, an Air Force pilot who grew increasingly concerned as his military friends struggled with the difficult process to search for services and programs available for veterans. Brillman, fellow veteran Taylor Justice and military supporter Andrew Price didn’t wait for the government to come up with a solution. They took matters into their own hands and started Unite US, a free online platform that connects military members, veterans and their families to resources both in their local communities and at the national level.
Similarly, Rose Broome of HandUp created her company after coming across a homeless woman on a cold San Francisco night. Her realization and frustration that there was no sustainable way to help that woman led her to found HandUp. The site and its initiatives such as Homeless Outreach Day enable donors to connect directly with those in need in their communities, helping provide them with everything from funds for basic necessities to medical procedures to college tuition.
These are just two examples of how personal frustrations with government can translate into innovative businesses and offer entrepreneurs the chance to bring communities closer together.
Take A New Career Step
Civic tech is reshaping the resumes of Silicon Valley veterans, new tech talent and those preparing to graduate and enter the workforce. These individuals see the tech deficits in government as career opportunities and the chance to do meaningful work that improves the lives of millions of Americans.
Within the last year, Megan Smith and Alex Macgillivray left tech titans Google and Twitter, respectively, for top positions at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Minerva Tantoco, New York City’s first-ever chief technology officer (CTO), joined Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration after more than 25 years in the private sector. Peter Marx, now Los Angeles’ CTO, was once at Qualcomm Labs and Mattel. Today, he uses his background as an engineer, producer and technical director to drive innovative initiatives such as Los Angeles’ partnership with the popular traffic app Waze.
Civic tech can play an important role in empowering people to take action.
Opportunities to do meaningful work in this intersection are only increasing. President Obama recently announced that the Presidential Innovation Fellowships program — an experimental program to bring tech talent into federal government for “tours of duty” to enable innovation and best technical practices — will now become a permanent part of government.
Rethinking how your tech background could be applied in government could lead to a purpose-driven career trajectory that you never imagined.
Become An Active User — And Citizen
While the civic tech movement is inspiring many people to start businesses or use their skills to serve in government, there are also easy ways for everyone to make a difference in their communities.
You can invest in city infrastructure projects instead of waiting for tax dollars to trickle down through platforms such as Citizinvestor and Neighborly. For example, you can fund a new bike rack downtown or new trash cans for a park, improving your community at an on-demand pace.
Platforms such as SeeClickFix allow individuals to report and track unresolved potholes, graffiti, broken streetlights and vandalized playgrounds, putting a transparent spotlight on government responsiveness. An estimated 25,000 issues were addressed in September alone through this civic tech platform, fostering collaboration with other residents, local government, partner organizations and media.
From long lines at the DMV to ineffective procurement processes, our 21st century challenges with government shape many Americans’ negative perceptions. But for those in the civic tech community, these challenges are an opportunity to give back and make a meaningful difference in our society.
Technology is not the solution to every problem, to be sure. But in an era marked by political pessimism and ever-increasing frustration with government, civic tech can play an important role in empowering people to take action — as entrepreneurs, as public officials and as engaged citizens.
Source: http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/14/civic-tech-brings-power-and-positivity-to-the-people/?ncid=tcdaily
Microsoft Azure Government continues momentum to meet government customer challenges
On October 14, 2015, Tom Keane Partner Director, Program Management of Microsoft Azure announced further momentum with new capabilities on Microsoft Azure Government that help customers leverage the cloud to deliver hybrid applications and business continuity. They released five new capabilities for Azure Government customers:
•Azure Backup
•Azure ExpressRoute
•Azure Resource Manager
•Azure Redis Cache
•Azure Automation
Since our launch ten months ago, hundreds of government customers in state and local, federal civilian and defense, plus over a hundred solution partners with dedicated government practices, have adopted Azure Government and these five new capabilities to expand on the innovation available to support their cloud requirements. This combination of new services combined with the largest set of compliance certifications in the industry give customers and partners the ability to do amazing things with Azure government. As said by one of our customers:
“The fact that Microsoft contractually committed to CJIS compliance by signing the FBI’s CJIS Security Addendum and having their employees background-checked by California DOJ helped give the LAPD the confidence that we could begin to leverage Azure Government for our most critical, sensitive workloads,” says Sanjoy Datta, information security officer, LAPD. “It is rare that vendors, on their own initiative, take the trouble to comply with the multiple regulatory frameworks that law enforcement, as well as all state and local government agencies, are required to meet. Microsoft has exceeded the LAPD's expectations in this regard by taking on the difficult requirements of the CJIS regulatory regime and meeting them head-on.”
Highlighting another customer success story of Azure Government and our compliance investments, Scott Shainman, president of Getac North America, worked with the Memphis Police Department to build a secure, scalable, mission-critical police video solution:
"The partnership of Getac's Veretos in-car video system and the Azure Government Cloud allows our customers to have the best secure data management and mobile video capture. Memphis Police Department is pursuing robust data driven policing and saw that Azure Government provides a contractual commitment to the CJIS Security Policy and easy integration with SQL Server - which the Getac software runs on - it gave them the assurance that this was the best solution for them," said Shainman.
Here are more details on the new capabilities we are announcing today for Azure Government:
Azure Backup
Azure Backup delivers an efficient and secure way for you to protect on-premises and on-cloud assets to Azure, and benefits from Azure Government’s physical isolation and support from cleared U.S. persons. Benefits include:
•Back-up for various workloads like SQL Server, SharePoint, Exchange, Hyper-V VM, Windows Servers and Windows Clients.
•Data encryption before it leaves your premises. This encrypted backup data is transmitted securely using HTTPS protocol and stored in an encrypted manner in the Azure Government cloud.
•Data is stored in highly resilient storage, up to six copies in two Azure Government cloud datacenters, geographically distributed more than 500 hundred miles apart providing true geographic redundancy and support for the continuity of your business.
Azure ExpressRoute
With Azure ExpressRoute you can create private, high-throughput connections between Azure Government datacenters and your existing infrastructure. Azure Government ExpressRoute connections do not go over the public Internet, and they offer more reliability, faster speeds, lower latencies, and higher security than typical connections over the Internet. What this means to you:
•A physically separate instance of ExpressRoute deployed specifically for Azure Government. This means that we have extended our Government cloud commitments from our datacenter, to neutral edge locations to provide the predictable performance and higher throughput of ExpressRoute, combined with the physical isolation that United States government customers demand.
•Initial Azure Government ExpressRoute Meet-Me sites are in Washington DC and Chicago vicinities. These locations provide dedicated connectivity to both U.S. Gov. Iowa and U.S. Gov. Virginia datacenters.
Azure Resource Manager (preview)
Azure Resource Manager allows you to simplify how you manage your app resources, including being able to:
•Deploy and update a group of resources, repeatedly.
•Manage permissions on a group of resources.
•Visualize a group of resources in a logical view, including monitoring or billing.
•Define the infrastructure and dependencies for your app in a single declarative template.
Azure Redis Cache (preview)
Azure Redis Cache provides access to a secured, dedicated Redis cache, managed by Microsoft. Accessible from any application within Azure Government, Azure Redis Cache helps your application become more responsive even as user load increases by leveraging the low latency, high-throughput capabilities of the Redis engine.
Azure Automation (preview)
With Azure Automation, you can automate frequent, time-consuming, and error-prone cloud management tasks. You can also:
•Create, monitor, manage, and deploy resources in Azure Government using runbooks, based upon Windows PowerShell workflows.
•Use Automation runbooks, which work with the Web Apps feature in Azure App Service, Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Storage, Microsoft SQL Server, and other popular Azure services, with any service offering public Internet application programming interfaces (APIs).
•Create checkpoints to resume your workflow after unexpected errors, crashes and network issues.
Looking to the future
We are listening to you and continue to regularly expand the set of capabilities in Azure Government.
--Tom