Rio+20: The Summit of our Ambitions?

21 Jun

The rain in Rio yesterday was not enough to cool heated debates at the UN Sustainability summit.

Outraged delegates – particularly from NGOs – lined up to pour scorn on the proposed text, ‘The future we want’, that leaders are expected to affirm by tomorrow.

The gap between earnest hopes and likely outcomes at Rio+20 is wide and the prospects of shrinking it are diminished because many of the world’s most powerful voices have been away at the G20 meeting in Mexico.

But in our own exploration of voices, views and opinions we’ve encountered a full spectrum – from passionate advocacy of network capabilities to perfect puzzlement at the notion of a ‘digital deficit’ and the need to understand that ‘transformation’ will not delivered by a gradual ‘upgrade’.

Full story here.

Rio+20: the reality of Digital Engagement

20 Jun

From an aerial view of the beach in Rio de Janeiro to Argyll & Bute in the Scottish Highlands by way of Brighton & Hove (and Nick Clegg, Aung San Suu Kyi, the EU delegation led by Denmark, ‘the hairy cornflake’ and Ellen MacArthur) we bring you our second report from the UN’s Sustainability Summit and a message about ‘the problem solving capabilities of networks‘.

All that plus Paragraph 65 of the Rio+20 draft final text that world leaders are expected to affirm this week.

Full story here with additional reporting from Marit Hendriks in Rio for NextGen TV.

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Rio+20: digital realities dawning

19 Jun

As thousands of delegates throng the conference halls of the UN Rio+20 Summit and work late into the night to try and reach a sustainable consensus, voices of reason are highlighting the national and global deficits in digital infrastructure.

In this first of our reports from Rio we bring together thoughts from the European Commission, the ITU, Boston Consulting Group, BT and the guy from Aberdeenshire who just got on with it and founded Mashable.com .  Additional reporting from Marit Hendriks of NextGenTV.

Full story here

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A digital Wake Up call

17 Jun

Whoever gets around to documenting the history of digital transformation should not overlook the small and seemingly insignificant moments that make the pennies drop.

One of these hit the headlines this week.  It was not some great scientific breakthrough, some amazing innovation in clinical practice, or the discovery of new sources of energy.  Nor was it an outbreak of peace in troubled places or a rush by world leaders to sign up to new commitments at the UN Rio+20 summit.

It wasn’t even another report on people empowerment expressed in YouTube videos from conflict areas.

This week’s commotion was the sound of scales falling from the eyes of everyday folk as they realised what digital citizenship was all about.

A nine year old student used her blog to review the quality of her school meals and raise money for the children of Malawi – and it caused havoc in the minds of local government officials.

It’s another a small step in wider awareness of the economy’s digital transformation that, when history is written, should not be forgotten.

Full story here

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Getting Rio

14 Jun

As Rio+20 gets underway and the mainstream media find this gathering of world leaders creeping into the news agenda, we give some time to considering how they will find consensus around fundamental issues for future sustainability.

The leaders will not be short of advice.  Lobbyists from every quarter of the globe and every sector of society are geared up for for a field day and honing their green credentials.

As great minds attempt to focus down on key global policy issues, the question that we hope the world leaders will ask of all those earnest supplicants is ‘Why are you telling me this?‘

And, when they jet back home to more mundane matters we hope that it will be a question they keep asking wherever and whenever they hear continuing excuses for the ‘digital deficit’ that blights the infrastructure that their citizens and venture leaders need for a return to economic health.

Full story here 

(Rio+20 will be reported for Groupe Intellex and NextGenTV by Marit Hendriks)

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Please hold during the silence

6 Jun

Having recently survived a series of bruising encounters of the Call Centre kind the editor is reminded that he has been writing this stuff for far too long.

He is also moved to wonder about progress and to share with readers a short note first published in 2004.

Back then the object of this writer’s ire was a phone company and today it’s a digitally different outfit – but at least the 2004 battle gifted us the headline ‘Please hold during the silence’.

With slightly better integration between departmentalised helpers, today’s call centre designers may lack poetry in their utterances but they are as addicted as ever to ‘the long button-pushing trail a-winding. . . . ‘

From the Group Intellex archive, ‘Hang on in there’ was written during one of those silences whilst waiting for a help-desk connection – and in those moments of reflection, when nothing more could be said or tweeted or text’d or posted, it sounded like a good rule for life.

Full story here

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Transforming Public Services – new report

4 Jun

Colin Coulson-Thomas has launched his latest report – Transforming Public Services – in which he debunks top-down management moves like restructuring.

What is really needed, he says, is far better performance support for people at the coal face – and this approach is cheaper, faster and far more effective.

You can find more of Professor Coulson-Thomas’s work in the Editorial (Management) section of the main Groupe Intellex publication.

Full story here

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Poet turns Plumber – for a day

3 Jun

Faced with the urgent need to boost digital access from the office at the end of the garden (also known as the Groupe Intellex international HQ) we made the decision to use optical fibre.

DIY skills were not much needed with a plastic optical fibre kit from Firecomms (Cork, Ireland) plus timely advice and encouragement from Networx3 – an exhibitor at NextGen Roadshows.

Full story and pictures here.

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The Digital Economy: there’s no going back

28 May

In our strongest editorial to date on the so-called Digital Economy  we assert that, in the same way that people say ‘the real economy’ without explaining what an un-real economy might be, there is no non-digital economy of any great substance.

Across every sector of the economy the qualifier ‘digital’ is redundant.  The digital infrastructure is as important to sustainable green policies for energy and transport as it is for Finance, Health and Manufacturing.   Fixing the ‘digital deficit’ is the first step towards economic recovery.

We suggest that to track the nation’s digital maturity we need to measure four things:  Fitness for Purpose, Balance, Hassle and Disruption.

Full story here.

See also previous editorial: Finding Nemode

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Business, Society and Public Services

23 May

It’s good to see the ‘Circular Economy’ mentioned in the RSA’s latest report but the primary concern is that policy development in public services and economic growth is not being tackled in any cohesive way.

Based on the experience of Community Study Tours in Scandinavia, Groupe Intellex has long argued that the glue that binds these things together is investment in a high quality digital infrastructure.

It may, of course, be far more obviously necessary in remote places, with extremes of weather and transport difficulties, to maximise the use of digital interaction for basic public services such as health and education but the impact has been equally beneficial for enterprise, innovation, competition, community development and the stimulation of inward investment .

The RSA report’s main title reflects the distinct labels of Business, Society and Public Services – regarded by many as being in entirely different camps –  but the subtitle – ‘a social productivity framework‘ gets a little closer to the ‘mashed up’ realities and interdependencies of the real economy.   It’s a brave step but probably far too much for ‘Sun headlined’  ideologically-driven policy developers looking for simple solutions.

Will sleepwalkers awake when digital floods rise higher than their knees?

Download the full RSA report (PDF) here

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