A think-tank report said that public sector managers had sometimes been too 'gung-ho' in their attitude to risk when developing and implementing information technology projects, wasting many millions of pounds of taxpayers' money as a result.
Source: Alexandra Jones and Laura Williams, Public Services & ICT: Where next for transformational government?, Work Foundation (0870 165 6700)
Links: Report | Work Foundation press release
Date: 2006-Sep
A report examined how mobile phones had changed the way children and young people lived. 91 per cent of children aged 12 owned a mobile phone. Almost 80 per cent of the young people surveyed said that they felt safer having a mobile, and that they had a better social life as a result. But 1 in 3 said that they talked regularly and/or send texts to people they did not want their parents to know about.
Source: The Mobile Life Youth Report 2006: The impact of the mobile phone on the lives of young people, Carphone Warehouse (0845 604 1207)
Links: Report | Carphone press release | BBC report | Guardian report
Date: 2006-Sep
A survey identified a gap between the level of children's knowledge of information/communications technology and that of their parents. 13 per cent of children aged 11 said that their parents never supervised internet use, and 11 per cent said that their parents did not know to whom they chatted online. 46 per cent of children aged 11-16 said that they could remove parental controls on their internet use, and disable security software.
Source: Get I.T. Safe: Children, parents and technology survey 2006, NCH (020 7704 7000) and Tesco Telecoms
Links: Report | NCH press release | Guardian report
Date: 2006-Jul
A report examined the relationship between the new 'social software' (such as internet discussion forums, blogs, and wikis) and the pesonalization of education.
Source: Martin Owen, Lyndsay Grant, Steve Sayers and Keri Facer, Social Software and Learning, Futurelab (0117 915 8200)
Links: Report
Date: 2006-Jun
A briefing paper examined 'pervasive computing' - the increasing integration of information technology into people?s lives and environments, made possible by the growing availability of microprocessors with inbuilt communications facilities.
Source: Pervasive Computing, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (020 7219 2840)
Links: Briefing Note
Date: 2006-May
A report said that the line between work and life would become increasingly blurred as technology continued to advance. The number of employees with always-on, mobile, e-mail access was set to rise significantly by 2010.
Source: Eye to the Future: How TMT advances could change the way we live in 2010, Deloitte & Touche LLP (020 7303 6410)
Links: Report | Deloitte and Touche press release | Personnel Today report
Date: 2006-May
A think-tank report said that failure to engage the public in decisions about the use and regulation of nanotechnologies could generate a controversy similar to that over genetically modified food.
Source: Matthew Kearnes, Phil Macnaghten and James Wilsdon, Governing at the Nanoscale: People, policies and emerging technologies, Demos and Lancaster University, available from Central Books (020 8986 5488)
Links: Report | Demos press release
Date: 2006-Apr
A report said that the tools and techniques developed for 'e-democracy' (such as the internet) could and should find a wider application at all points where citizens, local councillors and officers interacted.
Source: Deeper and Wider Community Engagement: e-democracy and its benefits for local authorities councillors and communities, Improvement and Development Agency (020 7296 6693)
Date: 2006-Apr
A paper examined the way social movements engaged with technology, including why they supported some technologies but not others.
Source: Adrian Smith, Environmentalism and Technology, Working Paper 149, Science Policy Research Unit/University of Sussex (01273 686758)
Links: Paper
Date: 2006-Apr
A survey examined the use of the internet. It highlighted the multiple and often interconnected reasons for digital exclusion: there was no one simple approach that would solve the problem. Moving a significantly greater segment of people online would require work on a case-by-case basis, new ways to communicate the value of the internet to non-users, and a major breakthrough in the accessibility of the internet.
Source: William Dutton, Ellen Helsper and Monica Gerber, The Internet in Britain 2009, Oxford Internet Institute/University of Oxford (01865 287210)
Links: Report | Telegraph report
Date: 2006-Jan