Sunday, 12 February 2012
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Tax and Revenue Management: A government’s lifeblood
IT has provided the opportunities for governments to remodel the entire process of tax collection over the last decade. It is, however, a continuously evolving process and governments the world over need to constantly upgrade their tax systems to optimise their revenue workflows.
Unlocking Public Value
A recent SAP study confirmed that those organisations which adopt best practices in the areas of scope and adoption, process standardisation, technology and customer governance, do perform better, and do so as their best practice maturity increases.
Governments and Socialising
The advent of social media has seen governments hopping onto the bandwagon in a bid to further engage citizens.
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Education IT
HK varsity builds collaborative environment
The digital and physical learning environment must respond to, and reflect, the increased need for collaboration among students and educators, Geoffrey Dengate, Director, Information Technology Services, The University of Hong Kong told FutureGov.
Universities should have a single Learning Management System (LMS). “It is much more cost effective to support one because the IT department only needs a set of staff who are trained in that LMS,” said Dengate. The University of Hong Kong currently has more than one system and are heading towards a unified LMS for easier management.
More importantly, a single LMS facilitates collaboration among the university. The faculty can share learning objects and collaborate in an environment knowing that the content will be delivered on the same platform. “Course content is most important in learning. Professors and lecturers should not have to worry about the delivery tool,” he added.
The collaboration among faculty staff could extend outside of the university, according to Dengate. For example, Griffith University and Queensland University of Technology had a whole range of collaborative projects. And because they shared a common LMS, it made it a lot easier to collaborate. The academic community in the field of nursing jointly developed a common course which was successfully delivered in both universities.
Similarly, students should have the same experience accessing content on the campus network. “It is undesirable for students to use this LMS for Course A and another for Course B. A consistent experience interacting with the system allows students to focus on the content and access it efficiently,” he elaborated.
The university believed that the LMS should incorporate as many applications as possible so that every feature associated with the student’s learning can be found on the same platform. The features include video and audio lecture capture, discussion forums, instant messaging tools, social networking sites, electronic assignment submission system, plagiarism detection tool, student administration system and the library system.
Dengate highlighted that the importance of the physical learning environment in promoting collaborative learning. The University of Hong Kong will be setting up a new Learning Centre by 2012, with an innovative design to help students work together easily.
“Instead of the traditional computer laboratories where you have rows of desktops facing the front, the new learning centre will be flexible to allow for varying student group sizes,” he said. To take advantage of the fact that majority of students now own a personal laptop or mobile phone, 80 per cent of the space will be designed with power sockets for personal devices, keeping desktops to the minimal. Ubiquitous wireless means that students can work anywhere.
“The learning centre, if designed well, should be a ‘hip’ place to be. Students will want to work there, socialise and mingle with their friends. It should be in a central location within the campus and easy to get to,” explained Dengate.
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