21st Century Education in the Emerging Markets

Tags: asia/pacific, government

The Intersection of Digital Education: McGraw-Hill and Blackboard Partnership

Tags: innovation, government

Blackboard has released a new version of a web-based learning management system that incorporates media-rich content and assessment engine from McGraw-Hill.  According to Doug Hughes, director, Digital Partnerships, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, “The Blackboard and McGraw-Hill partnership brings together two leaders in education technology to improve the classroom experience for students and faculty.”

I recall that just a few years ago, I made a trip to the US to explore trends and best practices in the digital textbook market that can be brought to the public education sector in Singapore.  At that time, textbook publishers like Thomson, McGraw-Hill and O'Reilly had already seen the potential in the digital education content space, and were experimenting with proprietary delivery platforms, developed around their content offerings.  However, at that point, learning management systems were torn between investing into content to supplement the learning process, as opposed to further enhancement of platform capabilities.

The publishing industry still faces challenges in flexible digital media delivery and copyrights protection, and continues to grapple with the possibility of the digital print crippling the paper print business. Yet, high costs of print, demand from educators to procure modular content, and the upside of the speed of adoption to a wider international market have thrust publishers into the digital course.   The Blackboard and McGraw-Hill collaboration is an elegant approach that allows both companies to focus on their core competencies enhancing their product offerings.   

Besides content, other education trends that are driving a paradigm change in the delivery of education technologies are:

• 21st Century Teaching Paradigm. Expectations of education have gone beyond pure knowledge transfer from teachers to students as employers expect graduates to be ”industry-ready” and equipped with a full range of skill sets ranging from communications to teamwork to problem solving when they join the workforce. Educational institutions need to remodel their teaching practices to incorporate the development of 21st century learning skills, while adapting to the different learning behavior of the new generation of students.
  
• Global, Virtual Education. At the same time, educational institutions have to provide better services to meet the demands of an increasingly global student community, where students expect to be reached out to regardless of physical location. Educators today can better leverage wireless Internet connectivity, elearning applications and Web services, and cloud applications to provide universal access of learning resources and applications to the student community.
  
• Mobility. Increasing affordability of basic computing devices made possible through 1:1 computing initiative is now common among many higher learning institutions.  Of course, one must not forget Apple's significant market share in education end users. The unstoppable move toward greater mobility has certainly not slowed down with the introduction of iPad.  

What these trends and the McGraw-Hill and Blackboard collaboration mean is that campuses are now provided the option of a simple 1-stop shop for rich media content. Day-to-day courses can now be delivered with the added convenience of collaboration, access and workflow management of assignments. Educators can also assess their students work regularly on the same platform. While this is pretty good news, educational institutes also need to be conscious of the impact on the network capacity demanded by such rich media intensive platforms.   What's next for digital textbooks?  I'm still hoping for to see a solution that allows me to access modular chapters in textbooks from multiple publishers. 

Cost Management Continues to Rank High on the Agenda of APEJ Public Sector in 2011

Tags: cloud computing, economic crisis, economic stimulus, government, public policy, innovation

In our latest report, “IDC Government Insights Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) Public Sector 2011 Top 10 Predictions”, we identified the top 10 predictions for 2011 that will heavily influence the direction and magnitude of IT investment of APEJ public sectors this year.

Although the APEJ economy has emerged noticeably stronger in the last few months, the public sector will be continuing its search for products and services that provide the best bang for the buck to better manage spending in 2011. Governments in the region are expected to channel their IT budgets to initiatives that give them the best deal for the dollar in four areas: operational efficiency, business-IT alignment, risk management and citizen-centricity.

In 2011, optimistic sentiments will be propelling the APEJ economy forward, transforming it to a market with tremendous growth potential. We believe this will change the global economic dynamics into one that is "multipolar".

In recent years, the rollout of various economic stimulus packages in the region have greatly increased infrastructure spending in the public sector and brought about notable transformations in the information and communications technology (ICT) landscape. This has led to advanced economies opening themselves to competition in ideas and experience from rising markets.

To create and cluster “hot spots” for the technology industry, APEJ governments are increasingly providing the soft and hard national infrastructure to create sustainable cities. This includes creating a critical mass of advanced knowledge sources (universities, and advanced public and corporate research labs), and attracting venture capital investments, entrepreneurial talents, knowledge workers, specialized professional services and sophisticated end users. Governments are also empowering institutions with capabilities to enforce intellectual property rights.

 To cope with progressively more borderless and collaborative business environments, APEJ public sector organizations need to achieve functional ICT integration and operational transformation agility.

Here are the highlights of the report:

• As the world economy evolves into one that is “multipolar”, the APEJ public sector is expected to surge ahead with a strong 7.1% year-on-year (YoY) projected growth in 2011.
  
• Governments in the APEJ region are increasingly driving sustainable economic growth within their jurisdictions instead of outsourcing. Lately, IDC Government Insights notices that there has been a push for IT insourcing/backsourcing.  
  
• The birth of social analytics will bring about greater intelligence into the public sector decision making process and Web 2.0 engagements. Coupled with the growth of personalization and conceptualization services, public sector employees will be increasingly empowered to improve citizen interactions. 
  
• The exploration of business-as-a-service (BaaS) will result in the wider adoption of private clouds. Most public sector organizations will consider the adoption of private clouds over public clouds to realize the flexibility and scalability benefits of cloud computing without compromising on security, availability and reliability threats. Although the technology risk is lower when adopting private clouds as compared to public clouds, the cost is noticeably higher.

If  you have any questions about the report, please feel free to contact me at geraldwang@idc.com.

 Figure 1: Key Themes for the APEJ Public Sector ICT landscape

The 'Social Age' Revolution of Asia/Pacific Public Sector Agencies

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The ‘Social Age', or ‘Social Computing’, has brought about unprecedented transformations to the way APEJ public sector agencies function, learn and collaborate. These forces, previously known to be 'foreign' to conventional practices, display considerable strategic potential if effectively managed.

With the growing constituency of empowered citizens and stakeholders, governments cannot neglect the huge socio-political impact of such technologies. In fact, it needs to transform radically to be able to respond in the way it serves and interacts with its stakeholders. Therefore, the impetus to constantly innovate for survival becomes progressively paramount.

Looking forward, with an increasingly mobile population of key stakeholders for the APEJ public sector, the following key trends are noted:

• Pursuit of cloud computing initiatives especially private cloud.
• Integrating social-analytics to assist the communications revolution in today’s Social Age/Exabyte Age.
• Getting on board with next-generation mobile devices for citizen and government centric applications.
• A whole new ICT security paradigm to deal with international terror threats and attacks.
• A growing socio-economic role of APEJ state/local governments to promote technological evolution and adoption, in addition to attracting and retaining state-level ICT economic investments.

The following figure illustrates the 'Social Age' phenomenon for the APEJ public sector.

Figure: People, Process & Technology – 3 Keys To Understanding The ‘Social Age’

source: IDC Government Insights 2010

Malware Continues to Plague Government Security

Tags: government, security, it priorities

In ZDNet's September article "Cheap Hardware Infects Government Agencies", the Australian shadow defence minister David Johnston was reported to make a stand on introducing new cybersecurity powers into the Trusted Information Sharing Network (TISN) for auditing government departments after ministerial advisors reported that various agencies have bought cheap IT hardware loaded with malware.

In Australia, the use of the Internet for public sector interactions grew from 19% between 2004 and 2005 to 38% in 2008, according to results from the “Use and satisfaction with eGovernment services” survey. The Australian government needs little convincing about the importance of cyber security when the interactions with the public through the Internet are higher than that through personal contact.

It is no surprise that IT security continues to remains a key priority for public sectors in the Asia/Pacific.  In one of our IDC Government Insights report (Best Practices: Building Resilience, Security, and Privacy in Evolving Public Sector Environments), we found that out of the 13 countries covered in the IDC Asia/Pacific Continuum Survey in 2009, 12 had placed security-related initiatives within their top five IT-related priorities for 2010.  Public sector executives from countries such as Australia, Indonesia and Philippines have cited security as the second most important IT investment priority moving forward.

As a custodian of a huge amount of personal data as well as sensitive information on national security, data protection remains a paramount concern for governments around the world. Any compromise of personally identifiable information and sensitive, mission-critical data could have an impact on public safety, national security or operational readiness, and undermine public trust.  At the same time, whilst governments seek to leverage more and more on the Internet as a means of communication and to transact more efficiently with their citizens, the threat of cyber attacks on their networks, web sites and digital assets continues to grow.

However, a worrying trend is noted where security considerations are made only as an afterthought.  A group of government respondents in our survey assessed or considered security solutions only after a data leak occurred within their organization, or upon hearing of such cases in other organizations. With the global economic sub-prime crisis looming since September 2008, more critical national issues such as cost reduction, jobs creation and economic revival have taken center-stage priorities for the AP Public Sectors.

David Johnston intends to push a ban on government agencies blindly placing cost considerations over security assurance goods after government departments discovered backdoor malware in poorly controlled procurement of computer equipment.  The Department of Defence was reported to have repelled 2400 cyber attacks in 2009 alone, indicating that exercising some caution goes a long way in the cybersecurity space.

Governments are considering cloud technologies in a bid to drive more efficient operations

Tags: cloud computing, asia/pacific, accountability, government, public policy, healthcare reforms, virtualization

The recent global recession has increased public scrutiny and accountability demands on the IT budgets of government organizations. Paradoxically, these organizations are increasingly under pressure to raise service competency and productivity. This cost and performance management irony has propelled public agencies to look to other technological alternatives, such as cloud computing solutions.

In the latest IDC Government Insights study, “Looking Ahead: Articulating Cloud Competencies for the Aisa/Pacific Public Sector (Doc #AP9694203S)", IDC Government Insights discussed the trends driving the adoption of cloud technologies, whether public, private or a hybrid of both models, and the concerns over the use of cloud computing technologies in the public sector such as security, reliability and regulatory compliance.

In general, most public sector agencies are widely dispersed operational silos and have an urgent need to coordinate and integrate the various egovernment functions. Notably, the challenge today is that these agencies face varying policy and operational restrictions which translate to different needs and scales on their IT capacity. As the business case for the traditional data center is no longer sustainable in the long run, the adoption of cloud computing technologies in the public sector has become a viable option.

We note that the Asia/Pacific public sector is still apprehensive about the adoption of cloud computing especially in agencies that handle sensitive information. Most of the initiatives today are still at an experimental stage as the public sector tries to determine the return on investment (ROI) and weigh the risks involved in the adoption of cloud computing technologies.

Governments should take an active change management stance to address the people and process aspects of cloud implementations, such as revolutionizing traditional workflows and facilitating interoperable standards to bring about greater inter-agency coordination. All the stakeholders involved need to internalize the value and application of the cloud model so as to truly realize a continued and successful egovernment transformation.

We are also expecting data protection and security solutions such as "rights-management-as-a-service", and integrated business intelligence and analytics applications to feature strongly as key technological innovations that lead the adoption of cloud computing for the public sector.

Inevitably, apart from cost management agendas, public sector agencies will need to define their own set of business requirements for cloud computing solutions. This means they have to explore and gather distinctive proficiency and awareness towards building a specialized enterprise-grade cloud services model that fits the unique environment it serves. Thus, the eventual adoption of cloud technologies, whether public, private or a hybrid of both models, lies fundamentally on the operational requirements it seeks to address.

Demonstrating public sector agility - Singapore's IDA surges ahead with egovernment revitalization plans

Tags: government, public policy, social media, web 2.0, it priorities

IDC Government Insights'  latest report "Opportunities Abound: Analysis of Singapore's US$720 Million Public Sector FY10 ICT Procurement Plans (Doc #AP9694104S, June 2010) " reveals that the Singapore government's future ICT procurement plans will revolve around new technology areas such as business intelligence (BI), ubiquitous presence and social media.  

This finding was echoed in a recent interview which Straits Times did with James Kang  (Chief Information Officer at the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore). In the interview, James shared that the Singapore government is starting to transform its online citizenry services to leverage on the rapidly evolving ICT environment that the nation is building upon.

There is also a strong indication that the government is planning to boost collaborations; and, it is not just within the government organization, but also with various stakeholders such as the ICT industry and the citizenry it serves. Increased collaborative engagements through social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are likely to be pursued.

As the government pushes ahead with the upcoming iGovt2015 public sector masterplan, IDC Government Insights expects to see strategic directives in revitalizing public services, systems consolidation and sustainability business solutions.

To date, Singapore has received several international accolades for its e-government excellence. This success however, is not an overnight miracle. Singapore's computerization journey first began almost 30 years ago with the Civil Service Computerization Program that was primarily targeted at automating work functions and reducing paperwork for greater internal operational efficiencies.  

Ultimately, egovernment efforts are not all about the implementation of technology alone, but also, the changing approach to the way the government delivers its traditional services. James also said in the interview that the key to successful egovernment implementation lies in changing mindsets and taking calculated risks within the government. I can't agree more with this statement. In addition to "changing mindsets and taking calculated risks," strong leadership directives and commitment from all stakeholders involved remains crucial ingredients of successful egovernment transformation.

Governments should stretch the stimulus dollar

Tags: government, economic stimulus, transparency, accountability

Since the onset of the economic crisis in September last year, governments have gone into crisis mode, bailing out critical institutions and announcing mega stimulus packages in hopes of cushioning the financial impact on their economies.

This avalanche of uncertainty has left a lingering 'bitter-taste' when over a trillion dollars worth of taxpayer dollars are spent on rescuing money-losing businesses. The question for citizens remains, "is my government spending our money rightly and wisely?" as they scrutinize stimulus and budget initiatives unveiled and look for government leadership in rebuilding the economy.

Correspondingly, the challenge for government CIOs is how to stretch the stimulus dollar through IT investments – how to deploy IT capabilities and implementations to reduce operational costs while enhancing efficiency, and how to increase transparency and accountability as public confidence in institutions from banks to government itself dips.

Technology and innovation create immense transformation power to improve the business of government and the lives of citizens. CIOs should optimize the potential of technologies such as Web 2.0 – from blogs, and wikis to other social networking applications – to enhance collaboration and citizen participation, and create workflows and nurture skills for applications that have not been tried before. Likewise, as citizens expect government to behave more transparently and efficiently, CIOs can ride on stimulus initiatives to strengthen a focus on risk management, compliance, dashboards, and other metrics to manage performance and demonstrate accountability. 

However it is important to urge caution not to go overboard with such initiatives to the extent that they are seen to saddle government employees with a greater bureaucratic burden that translates into more red tape that citizens' face, instead of focusing on the original objectives of helping citizens in these new and challenging economic times!