Big ideas, little price tag

Sometimes it’s the little things that make life better. Like the DVD envelop buried beneath my pile of mail—a reminder that for a low monthly cost I can enjoy unlimited movies with no late fees. Or the way my MP3 player untethered my favorite tunes from a growing avalanche of CDs and forever changed the way I think about buying, sharing, and listening to music. Or how a free phone app lets me quickly pay my parking meter without a frantic search for spare change.

As a modern consumer, I’ve grown to expect new technologies and services that help me get things done in new and different ways. It's a simple progression: technology advances, prices drop, and over time performance generally improves.

But one major sector of the economy has struggled to embrace the type of innovation that will achieve more for less—government. In an era of increasing commoditization, consumers want quality and convenience, all for a small price tag. Governments have certainly leveraged technology to improve the performance of cumbersome processes in the past 10 years but often at a high cost.

Eyes on the sky: How cloud computing is shaping society

Next week global leaders from DTTL and Deloitte member firms are meeting in Davos at the 2012 World Economic Forum to discuss the important issues of the day. While we can’t all attend, I have the real privilege to participate in a local Davos event in New York for clients of the U.S. firms. I’ll be speaking about cloud computing, and how it is not just a technology phenomenon, but is shaping society itself.

As someone who has been working with leading innovators for many years, my sense is that cloud computing represents a once-in-a-generation convergence of technologies: high-speed broadband, large-scale data centers, and flexible virtualization software. Working together as “cloud computing,” these forces are driving one of the most important global technology transformations impacting on many types of business, political, and social structures.

Deloitte21 program e-Learning for Kids and e-Learning for Life: Founding dreams through free digital education

What chances does a young person have nowadays without a good education? In a world where quality education is taken for granted in order to have well-being and prosperity we’re not always aware that this is not the case for everyone. Worldwide, there are still millions of youths who will not achieve their dreams of becoming, for example, a nurse, entrepreneur, police officer, or engineer, let alone a Nobel Prize winner simply because of a lack of good education. These young people may not be gaining computer literacy, teamwork skills, and the ability to solve problems, local or global, in a creative and innovative way. Or, they may even work long hours in factories to earn little money, survive in dangerous warzones, or live in remote areas where schooling is unavailable. Because of these circumstances, the goal of a prosperous future seems unattainable.

Who are e-Learning for Kids and e-Learning for Life, and what do we do?

We are here for every child and young adult with a dream. Since the end of 2004, e-Learning for Kids and e-Learning for Life have been developing free, digital, and innovative lessons for underprivileged children and teens, advancing young people’s 21st-century skills-readiness on a global scale. We see ourselves as a foundation that helps young people realize their dreams by preparing them for successful futures. Through our programs, young people enjoy working and playing on the computer. Our digital lessons are designed to inspire learning in a fun way. It is our belief that every young person deserves a chance to reach his or her full potential.

Bridging the digital divide: Deloitte21 program Close the Gap

In 2003, I founded Close the Gap International, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to bridge the digital divide by providing refurbished computers and information technology (IT) equipment to educational programs in developing, and more recently, in developed countries. Our objective is to improve the lives of underserved young people by providing them access to IT equipment, and by extension, computer literacy skills and information via the Internet that they would not otherwise have access to. 

In the industrialized world, computers are replaced every three to four years, meaning that companies are increasingly looking for sustainable ways to replace their used devices. At the same time, millions of computers are needed, particularly in developing countries. Recognizing this cycle, Close the Gap created a win-win situation. By supplying developing countries with high-quality, refurbished IT equipment that’s donated by companies in Western countries, Close the Gap creates practical, social and sustainable solutions that enable people to bring about a true change in their lives through the use of IT.

Through 2010, Close the Gap collected more than 160,000 computers from donors in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxemburg, and the Netherlands. These devices are being used in learning centers in sub-Saharan Africa, South-East Asia,  Latin America, and also more recently in employability programs in Belgium, France,  Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.

Cloud computing in government explodes

Governments struggle with technology. Be it the procurement of hardware, vendor selection, or storage capacity, all of these things can present grim bureaucratic hurdles for public administrators.

This is changing. Today, anyone with an Amazon account can instantly access nearly unlimited computing power on Amazon's Web Services platform in a matter of minutes. No contract is needed. With a few clicks—the procurement process is as simple as buying a book—anyone can rent virtually unlimited computing capacity and storage. Popular services such as Gmail and Flickr operate on the same principle: Information is stored on the Web, where it is accessible from any machine, anytime. Similar cloud services are available from IBM, Google and others.

This is cloud computing, a technology with the potential to dramatically overhaul IT in the public sector.

It's hard to recall a recent technological development that has generated more hype than cloud computing. Why all the excitement? Simple. Cloud computing offers governments a clear and compelling value proposition: All the technological firepower you need without any of the headaches of ownership and maintenance.

Inviting citizens in

Back to square one
Democratic government was conceived to be by the people and for the people. Because government and the populace it served was so small initially, an intimate relationship between the two was more easily maintained. But that relationship changed over time as government bureaucracy grew larger and people grew more distant from elected officials and the work those officials do.

The sheer size and impersonal nature of governments today make citizens feel cut off from government, and skeptical about what government is doing for them.

The Internet shortened the distance between government and the citizens it serves because government agencies began to put an electronic face on formerly paper-bound services. But e-government was then; this is now.