The workshop under the headline iLaw Eurasia, organized by the CDT and others, took place in Tallin from Monday to Friday. Great place (the IT college of Estonia), in cooperation with the e-gov academy of Estonia… This country is really amazing – a mixture of great history and Soviet style. But they don’t complin, instead move forward. The result is that it has Internet all over – free and paid, but you pay like $ 2 for 24 hours – by far the cheapest public wireless access I’ve seen.
The histories of way Internet is being developed in the Central Asian countries, but also Bulgaria, Belorussia, Moldova, etc., are quite interesting (hope they will be published at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ilaw/eurasia_2004
However, listening to Ivar Tallo’s presentation at the end of Thursday, I am really getting upset… by my own government! We were at the same position as Estonia 15 years ago. Even 4 years ago we moved on the right track. Today Bulgaria’s totally lost in cyberspace… And no political will to do the changes, no need of society to change things, as criminals work better when there’s no accountability.
I’m very sorry for not being able to push my own government hard enough so that they would lead the e-revolution. May be next year…
e-government v. 1.0.8
http://www.download.bg/index.php?cls=program&mtd=default&id=460824
Автор: Даниел Денев
Лиценз: Open Source
ОС: Windows NT/2000/XP
Големина: 457000 KB
http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&type_of_search=soft&words=e-government
A unique system for electronic municipality, based on open source software, was designed and developed by Daniel Denev, Bulgarian expert in electronic interactive systems.
The system is constructed to provide electronic administrative services, electronic voting, electronic tenders etc. The platform uses technologies such as PHP, MySQL as a server for data bases, MS-technologies for corporate applications, also XML and desktop applications. ???This is not just software but a whole conception, already adopted in the world’, says Denev. We can make sure of his words by comparing the number of downloads of his software with the number of the other similar products on SourceForge.net, world’s biggest open source software repository. There are many similar published programs but only three are really working. Main difference – Bulgarian software is the only one that uses Microsoft technology for business applications and services (C#.NET & XML).
The story
In 2003 was created the first prototype. Denev initiated negotiations with the mayor of a small Bulgarian municipality to introduce the software. ???Except the mistrust and suspiciousness, the other thing I faced was disregard’, he remembers. Soon after this incident his work received the acknowledgement of the guild. In 2004 Denev’s software, named ???Municipality X’, took the prize for best e-government application on the national ???IT innovations’ competition. The prize was followed by a great number of conversations with mayors and ???inveterate bureaucrats’, but all of them ended unsuccessfully. Meanwhile the archived software disappeared under vague circumstances.
In 2007 Denev started working again on a similar project for another Bulgarian municipality. Few months later the council members changed their mind and suspended the financial support. After the next unsuccessful circle of negotiations with local and national administration Denev finally came round to the opinion that ???the state is not aware of the necessity of high-tech projects’. In the first months of 2008 he terminated once and for all the work on e-government/e-municipality project and published everything together with the code and the documentation on SourceForge.net.