Today the pressetext Austria revealed that several top secret documents were found on public file sharing sites.
Amongst these documents are secret evacuation routes of the US chief executive, Barack Obama.
While it is unknown whether the documents are recent or not the question about the capabilities of government is the issue that comes to focus because it’s not the only exceptionally embarrassing failure of e-government and related issues.
A short while back the BBC published an article in which they wrote about an external consultancy who’d lost a memory stick with the data of “thousands of criminals”, and the list of mishaps goes on and on.
I got my personal take on how responsible governments are handling data of their citizens when I ordered my new passport a year ago which required to submit biometrical data, amongst others my fingerprint. When I stood up to put my finger on the reader I caught a glimpse of Microsoft Windows XP Home running on the machine that was obviously going to store my data. If that doesn’t give you a “high security feeling” then I don’t know what does.
In several talks I’ve had with government entities the one thing I’ve learned is that the citizens are very skeptical when it comes to using e-government platforms. And who’s going to blame them considering all of these disasters taking place repeatedly.
The primary issue which all governments should be working on is establishing trust to their platforms, followed by hiring usability consultants because e-government portals in most cases have another major flaw: missing usability and accessibility.
What is your take on applied e-government?
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July 31st, 2009 - 4:31 am
Obama’s secret evacuation routes show up on file sharing sites: Today the pressetext Austria revealed that sever.. http://bit.ly/3bGsw
July 31st, 2009 - 6:57 am
Obama’s secret evacuation routes show up on file sharing sites http://bit.ly/i2jqc
July 31st, 2009 - 8:37 am
Thank you, Lars, for raising here this universally important issue.
The question remains if the USA administration cannot take care about important information concerning the most powerful person in the world – President of the USA, then what eligibility they have of policing the world?
And in such a scenario, what is the fate of citizens of other countries particularly those consigned by world power politics to ’satellites-states’ status, such a Pakistan?
Anyway, technology has no bounds but its bonafide use depends on unchaining the learning oportunities so that only the best brains, from anywayer, could find themselves on the helm of human affairs in this information era.
Kindest regards. sadiq
July 31st, 2009 - 8:54 am
ooops! rt @lars_hilse Obama’s secret evacuation routes show up on file sharing sites! http://kl.am/1Qg7
July 31st, 2009 - 2:01 pm
This is a very interesting read however, you should be aware that it would be impossible to have a Windows XP home machine on a government network. XP Home will not support joining a “Corporate” network. The only way this machine could have been XP home is if it was a standalone unit and would have to way to provide the data it collected to other systems.
July 31st, 2009 - 3:45 pm
@JS This may be true for some countries, but government IT is a very sensitive subject in Germany. Especially in context to security involved therein.
August 3rd, 2009 - 7:43 pm
http://bit.ly/hUlNr
Crazy…
February 2nd, 2010 - 10:04 am
WOW – Obama’s secret evacuation routes show up on file sharing sites http://ow.ly/12FFa #safety #fail