Again on public or private water (this time in Rome)
On February 11th, 2010 a public rally against the complete privatization of Acea took place in Rome. Acea is the partly public company that manages the water distribution system in Rome and other cities of the Lazio region. The purpose of the rally was
Junior High students in Monza build their own Ubuntu computers
Last November, the Confalonieri Public Junior High School in Monza, Northern Italy set up a really interesting and original optional course for its students. When I heard about it on an Italian mailing list I contacted the two teachers who run the course, Fabio Frittoli and Francesco De Gennaro (quoted below as F&F for brevity) to know something more.
Italian entrepreneur fights proprietary file formats in Public Administrations
As I already explained in another article file formats are extremely important: unless, at least in Public Administrations (PAs), only open file formats are used, serious amounts of public money can go to waste, important public digital documents may become unreadable and private citizens or businesses may be forced to useless expenses if they want to interact with PAs.
Why every citizen should read the Open Government book
Open Government - Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice is a book (DISCLAIMER: I’m one of the authors, see below) that explains how governments and local Public Administrations can use digital technologies to work more efficiently, save lots of taxpayers money and let citizens control what public officers are actually doing. Why is something like this very important for all citizens? Because, as I already explained in the Online Loser Guide, digital technologies and the Internet can be either a huge help to make real democracy happen, or just a new, more powerful system for centralized control.
File formats, alphabets and public money: did you know that...
File formats are the rules that define the meaning of all the sequences of bits that you can find inside a computer file.
Who cancels your email? Warning to Infostrada and Barracuda users
Infostrada is one of the biggest Internet Access Providers (IAP) in Italy. Barracuda is a software filter that analyzes all the email messages entering the network of an organization in order to block spam, viruses and similar.