en.europa-eu-audience

Utilisation d’Internet au Québec en mai 2012

Source: http://blogue.cefrio.qc.ca/2012/05/utilisation-dinternet-au-quebec-en-mai-2012/

Résultats de mai – NETendances 2012

En mai 2012, 79,7 % des adultes québécois ont utilisé Internet au moins une fois au cours de la semaine précédant la mesure. Ce taux est demeuré très stable au cours des derniers mois.

Le taux d’internautes réguliers est significativement plus élevé chez les adultes québécois de 18 à 24 ans (99,2 %), de 25 à 34 ans (93,8 %), de 35 à 44 ans (87,4 %), de même que chez ceux de 45 à 54 ans (86,9 %). Les adultes dont le revenu familial annuel est supérieur à 60 000 $ (93,7%) sont aussi proportionnellement plus nombreux à utiliser Internet régulièrement. Enfin, les étudiants (98,7 %), les professionnels (96,2 %) ainsi que les cols blancs (92,2 %) sont les catégories socioprofessionnelles où l’on retrouve les plus fortes proportions d’utilisateurs réguliers d’Internet. De même, on retrouve significativement plus d’internautes réguliers chez les adultes qui ont fait des études collégiales ou universitaires (89,7 %)

Soulignons qu’en mai 2011, une proportion de 77,8 % des adultes québécois ont utilisé Internet au moins une fois au cours de la semaine précédant la mesure.

 

Five essential websites about usability

Usability is an essential part of website design. From content and colour to buttons and checkout baskets, many issues need to be considered to ensure a website meets best practice standards. Here are five insightful websites that can guide you through the usability maze…

http://amas.ie/usability-essentials/

USA: The Digital Strategy and Making Mobile Gov 2.0

Have a look on

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/egov/digital-government/digital-government.html

 

The Digital Government Strategy sets out to accomplish three things:

• Enable the American people and an increasingly mobile workforce to access high-quality digital government information and services anywhere, anytime, on any device.

  Operationalizing an information-centric model, we can architect our systems for interoperability and openness, modernize our content publication model, and deliver better, device-agnostic digital services at a lower cost.

The Rapidly Changing Mobile Landscape

• Mobile broadband subscriptions are expected to grow from nearly 1 billion in 2011 to over 5 billion globally in 2016.

• By 2015, more Americans will access the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs.

• As of March 2012, 46% of American adults were smartphone owners – up from 35% in May 2011.

• In 2011, global smartphone shipments exceeded personal computer shipments for the first time in history.

• Ensure that as the government adjusts to this new digital world, we seize the opportunity to procure and manage devices, applications, and data in smart, secure and affordable ways.

  Learning from the previous transition of moving information and services online, we now have an opportunity to break free from the inefficient, costly, and fragmented practices of the past, build a sound governance structure for digital services, and do mobile “right” from the beginning.

• Unlock the power of government data to spur innovation across our Nation and improve the quality of services for the American people.

  We must enable the public, entrepreneurs, and our own government programs to better leverage the rich wealth of federal data to pour into applications and services by ensuring that data is open and machine-readable by default. 

 

Time Spent on Apps

Read more on http://blog.citizen.apps.gov/howtomobile/2012/05/22/trends-on-tuesday-time-spent-on-apps/

 

Mixed messages around mobile web and apps coming in via comScore mobile data.

Internet Use and Democratic Demands ...

Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01627.x/pdf

Extract

The success of a democracy depends, in part, on public demand for democratic institutions.

How does Internet use shape citizens’ preferences for regime type? Combining individual

public opinion data from Africa and Asia with country-level indices, we test a multilevel

model examining the relationship between Internet penetration, individual Internet use,

and citizen demand for democracy across 28 countries. We find that Internet use, but not

national Internet penetration, is associated with greater citizen commitment to democratic

governance. Furthermore, greater democratization and Internet penetration moderates the

relationship between Internet use and demand for democracy.

 

Australia goes mobile - 47% of net connections via mobile devices

Source: http://egovau.blogspot.com/2012/03/australia-goes-mobile-47-of-net.html

It's long been reported that the majority of internet connections in Japan are via mobile devices - since 2006 in fact.

It now seems Australia is on the verge of following the same path, with the ABS reporting that as at 31 December 2011, 47% of internet connections in Australia were via mobile devices.

The report, (8153.0 - Internet Activity, Australia, Dec 2011), has some other interesting findings as well...

• The number of internet connections grew by 11.0% in the year to 31 December, and by 6.3% since the end of June 2011.
• Mobile wireless grew fastest, with a 14.7% increase since the end of June 2011.
• The number of dial-up connections continued to decline, to 475,000 - still a substantial number, but representing only 4% of the total 11,596,000 internet connections in Australia. Of those 379,000 (3.2%) were households, the rest businesses. 
• The number of dial-up connections declined 17.9% (from 579,000 to 475,000) since June 2011.
  Note the ABS state the decline was 16.7% - I don't know why our calculated figures differ.

• More Australians remain on connection speeds less than 8Mbps (55%), however a good proportion are on 8-24Mbps (34.3%). Only 0.3% are on connections greater than 100Mbps.

• The total data downloaded was 345,518 Terabytes (or 345,518,000 Gigiabytes) for the three months ending 31 December 2011. This was an increase of 26% since June 2011 (remember the number of connections only grew by 6.3% so we're all downloading more). 
• The average downloaded per connection was 29.8 Gigabytes (Gb) for the three months so, on average, we download 10Gb per month.
• However dial-up users only downloaded, on average, 67 Megabytes (Mb) of data per month, while broadband users downloaded an average of 10.3 Gb of data - showing a massive difference in usage.

• There were 91 ISPs in Australia with more than 1,000 subscribers - remaining a competitively very robust market.

 

UK Open Standards Consultation

Source: http://www.jenitennison.com/blog/node/169

UK Open Standards Consultation

Sat, 2012-04-14 22:44 — Jeni

Over the last few months, the UK Government has been running a consultation on its Open Standards policy. The outcome of this consultation is incredibly important not only for organisations and individuals who want to work with government but also because of its potential knock-on effects on the publication of Open Data and the use of Open Source software within public sector organisations.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft, Qualcomm and other organisations who have a vested interest in keeping the UK Government locked in to their products are responding vociferously to the consultation. They risk not only losing business to smaller enterprises within the UK but also, if the policy is successfully adopted here, in other countries in Europe and internationally that follow suit.

If we want our Government to be Open — to use Open Standards, to publish Open Data, to adopt Open Source — then we must respond to this consultation in numbers.

There are three things that you can do:

1. Respond to the consultation — made even easier by this response form developed by Ric Harvey
2. Attend the events — these seem pretty full now, but try to get in if you can
3. Spread the message — blog and tweet and write to raise awareness of the importance and impact that this consultation could have

The consultation is quite long and there are a lot of questions to answer. In the hope of making this easier for everyone, I’m publishing my response below. Please consider these responses public domain, and feel free to copy as much or as little as you like from them (though I recommend you omit the parts that are about my individual experience and substitute them with your own).

For extra background, read:

• Of Microsoft, Netscape, Patents and Open Standards by Glyn Moody
• Are open standards a closed barrier? by Linda Humphries
• Open Standards at risk by Ric Harvey

 

Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government: A Review

Source: http://eaves.ca/2012/04/13/canadas-action-plan-on-open-government-a-review/

 

The other day the Canadian Government published its Action Plan on Open Government, a high level document that both lays out the Government's goals on this file as well as fulfill its pledge to create tangible goals as part of its participation in next week's Open Government Partnership 2012 annual meeting in Brazil.

So what does the document say and what does it mean? Here is my take.

 

Canada's Action Plan on Open Government

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• The Evolution of Canada's Open Government Strategy
• Canada's Action Plan on Open Government
• Our Commitments
• Foundational Commitments
• Activity Stream 1 – Open Information
• Activity Stream 2 – Open Data
• Activity Stream 3 – Open Dialogue
• Conclusion

Source: http://open.gc.ca/open-ouvert/ap-patb-eng.asp

Apps vs Mobile Web

An interesting debate to view on http://blog.citizen.apps.gov/howtomobile/2012/04/10/trends-on-tuesday-apps-vs-mobile-web-again/