Bristol Wireless News

From BCC press Office –
http://www.bristol-city.gov.uk/ccm/content/press-releases/2006/jul/it-development-eases-sharing-of-information.en

A new IT development is marking the beginning of the end of ‘can’t open yours’ culture.

As part of its drive to reduce the cost of services without compromising quality, Bristol City Council today joined the Open Document Format (ODF) Alliance. The move is expected to make it easier to share documents in different formats and avoid the frustrating ‘can’t open yours’ culture, which slows down work.

The ODF Alliance is an initiative driven by a broad cross-section of organisations from industry and the academic, voluntary and public sectors. Members of the Alliance support the use of the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) approved Open Document Format. This ensures that organisations using varying software programmes can read and use each other’s documents easily. The alliance has a membership of 220 organisations who all recognise the cost benefit.
Saving time and money

Most of today’s electronic office documents have been created by a few commercial software programmes and more often than not each one has its own format which cannot be used in conjunction with others without recourse to a time-consuming and limited conversion process. In order to process a document, users need the same programme (and corresponding versions) or a filter that allows the document to be opened and modified. OpenDocument Format does away with this need.

Last year Bristol City Council converted its word processing and other office software to Sun Microsystems’ Star Office package, saving £1.1 million. Since then many large organisations have announced their intention to migrate to ODF compatible software. Crucially Microsoft, whose Office software package is the most widely-used globally, has now agreed to make its software compatible – a major step forward.

Councillor Steve Comer, Executive Member for Central Support Services, said: “Finding more cost-effective ways of doing the things we’ve always done should be part of the job here. Making savings where they can be made easily and without negative impact, protects important services and helps us keep council tax down as far as possible.”

Bristol Named Region’s Leading Digital City… And One of UK’s Top Ten

Bristol has today been named the South West’s top digital city after being named amongst the ten national finalists in the government’s Digital Challenge.

DCLG Minister Angela Smith MP announced the winners and finalists at a ceremony broadcast live on the web on Wednesday, July 12th 2006.

A successful and wide-ranging partnership of Bristol businesses, community groups and city council representatives called ‘Connecting Bristol’ has worked together to bid for the final £7 million prize. Winning the regional stage will mean a prize of £120,000 enabling the partnership to continue to the final stage of the challenge.

The Digital Challenge seeks bids which develop digital access to services, break down barriers to the use of IT and widen the use of IT among all groups of the community.

Bristol City Council leader, Cllr. Barbara Janke, says: “We are delighted that our bid has been recognised as the best vision for the region.

“The £120,000 prize will enable us to develop our bid further; to look at new ways of using new and existing technologies and connections to improve services and opportunities for our local communities, particularly the most disadvantaged.

“We want to bridge the digital divide in the region and ensure that we improve the use of IT by people with limited access. We also want to improve the take-up of online services by people with little IT knowledge.”

Bristol is already one of the top European locations for wi-fi networking, digital technology research and development and the creative industries, as well as online service delivery, public consultation and democratic engagement.

In addition, the city has been awarded Science City status by the government and has also been named European City of eDemocracy.

For more information on Bristol’s bid see the Connecting Bristol website. For more recent news and updates on the Digital Challenge bid, visit Steve Hilton’s weblog.

Ben Green of Bristol Wireless is organising a free introductory course to Cinelerra at Easton Community Centre, Kilburn Street on 27th July 2006. As there are only 8 places available, early booking is advised. Participants should arrive at 9:30 am to get settled in, take refreshment and be ready for a 10 o’clock start. The course ends at 4 pm.

For further details please call Bristol Wireless on 0117 325 0067 (or 0845 862 0110) or drop an email to ben@bristolwireless.net.

For those who need it, here’s a location map for Easton Community Centre.

The Register reports that the French government is intending to provide 1.2m of the country’s poorest citizens with a computer and broadband connection for €1 per day.

Over half of the French population currently use the web on a regular basis, with 38 per cent of homes connected and 10m broadband connections. However, the excluded half contains large numbers of the poor and elderly.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced the plan, which forms part of France’s committment to make public services available online, at an Interministerial Committee for the Information Society meeting on Tuesday 11th July.

Read the full article at the Register.